A few years back, Keith Ricken got sick. After undergoing a colonoscopy in hospital, the doctor delivered some hard-hitting results. His wife and children were in the room at the time when the doctor asked if he had any questions. His kids had just eaten his toast. Ricken was starving. “Is there any chance,” he asked the doctor, “that I could get more tea and toast?”
On the journey home, Ricken’s wife asked why his first reaction to bad news was to ask for food. He said that sating his hunger was the most important thing to him at that particular time.
When Ricken shared that story with the Cork Under-20s in 2019, his message was simple — the next obstacle is all that matters. When a soft goal, which originated from a short kick-out, put Dublin ahead by nine points after just 11 minutes of that year’s All-Ireland final, a Cork defender ran into goalkeeper Josh O’Keeffe. “Tea and toast,” he said. “Next kick-out.”
Cork won the restart and immediately replied with a goal. The nine-point deficit was wiped out in seven minutes. Cork went on to win by eight points.
Ricken has always dealt with challenges on and off the pitch in his calm, measured manner. His post-match TV interviews with the U20s over the last three years underline how Ricken never gets too high or too low. When appointed senior manager in September, that soothing approach looked set to at least offer much needed stability to a Cork footballing culture too often exposed to wildly oscillating emotions.
Advertisement
As U20 manager, Ricken continually portrayed Cork football positively. In 2019, he spoke about appreciating the frustrations perennially associated with Cork football but never experiencing that negativity, or that if he did, Ricken just chose to “ignore it”.
That is much harder to do at senior level, but Ricken has kept trying to put a positive spin on a cause now threatening to spiral out of control. After Cork’s defeat to Galway when conceding 3-22, Ricken said that he didn’t fear relegation. That may have been subliminally aimed at taking the pressure off the players, but that has become near impossible now. A defeat to Down today would almost mean certain relegation; with Cork’s slim prospects of beating Kerry in the Munster semi-final, that would more than likely see Cork spend the summer in the Tailteann Cup.
“We should be doing far better but we have been conditioned in Cork for the last ten years where it’s nearly been acceptable to fail in football,” says John Fintan Daly. “It’s nearly been acceptable for Cork’s standards to go lower and lower and lower.”
Daly applied for the job last year when Ricken was appointed. Daly has won 18 adult titles at club and county, which includes All-Irelands in U21 and Junior with Cork, and club All-Ireland Intermediate and Junior titles. He led Duhallow to two Cork senior titles, but Daly never was, or has been, deemed the right fit for the Cork job.
For the first time, Cork invited applications from outside the county. The Cork football job has always looked ideally suited for an outsider with no agendas to come in and tear up the script. A few applied, but the big-name candidates the board were looking for didn’t bite. The board did still speak to some of those big names but nothing materialised.
Advertisement
Ricken is a popular character within the county, but he and his entire management have never worked at senior level before. Trying to build a new team was always going to be a tricky assignment when hardened experience was going to be so pivotal in any bid for league survival, and particularly when Cork have lost so much of it.
Ten of the players which featured in league and championship last year are no longer around, some of which were let go. Twelve of the players which lined out on Sunday against Meath didn’t play in last year’s Munster final. Fourteen players have made their league debut this spring.
“What’s amazing is we’re back in transition again,” said Larry Tompkins recently in the Irish Independent. “This is the big word down here — transition. When is it going to be that this transition is finished? Players don’t seem to be coming through and you have to say, ‘What’s the reason?’ ”
Integrating new and young players is not like it was in the past because of the strength and conditioning (S&C) ladder, and so many of Cork’s players are still on the bottom rungs. Physically, and in S&C comparisons, Cork have looked way off.
In the second half on Sunday, Meath turned Cork over in possession on nine occasions thanks to greater physical power. Their skill execution has been poor, too. Nine of Cork’s 25 turnovers last week were unforced errors which led to 1-2. Cork’s physical struggles were also evident in the kick-out battle. Their kick-out strategy looks non-existent. Cork have been crippled by injuries, with eight starters out, some long term. It has been such an epidemic that there needs to be a review of S&C, but all the old issues have resurfaced.
Advertisement
Cork aren’t hard to beat. No team has conceded more or scored less. Cork’s conversion rate against Meath was just 38 per cent. Their average over their last three games is 51 per cent, but all of Cork’s numbers are horrendous; along with Carlow, Cork have the worst score difference in the four divisions; Cork are one of only three teams not to have won a game.
Those stats are harder to justify given Cork’s huge population, size and potential; there are 47 more clubs in Cork than in the entire province of Connacht; there are more football clubs in Cork than in the whole of Munster. “We are always accused of being a hurling county that plays a bit of football, but that’s not the case,” says Daly. “There are more people playing football in Cork than in any other county. There is always an excuse; we’ll say, ‘There are problems there that will take a long time to fix’. This is suggesting that other counties don’t have problems either. Did Rory Gallagher not have problems going into Derry? This thing in Cork about long-term issues is pure nonsense.”
Now, they’re on the brink. Twelve years after meeting in an All-Ireland final, Cork and Down square off in a battle for survival. A second potential relegation to Division 3 in four years is not good enough for Cork. It doesn’t make sense, but with each passing year, Cork are becoming a riddle wrapped up in an enigma.
