Like everyone else, I was glued to the golf on Sunday night. Rory McIlroy is some boy. You could only be delighted for him. Imagine being able to produce a round like that, to see it out under that kind of pressure. The stones you’d need to be able to do it.
I loved the laugh he gave after his second shot on the seventh. Harry Diamond told him to play it safe, but he went for it anyway and lashed a big high one over the trees in front of him that bounced about three feet from the pin.
The camera cut to him and he was in stitches – but it was pure nervous laughing. It was the kind of laugh you give if you’ve just spun the car on black ice and walked away without a scratch on you. It was like he was going, “We got away with that one! Sure didn’t I tell you it would be okay?” You love to see a fella like that take the ultimate prize.
I saw him up close a few weeks ago at Bay Hill. I was over in Orlando with the family and one of the days, I took a run up to the Arnold Palmer and walked around with Brendan Lowry. The thing that jumped out at me the most was that the Yanks love McIlroy.
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At one stage, we were walking along and the lad in front of me shouted over at McIlroy: “Rory, you’re my hall pass!” Each to their own, I suppose. But you could see it on Sunday – even though he was playing alongside Bryson DeChambeau, he had far more of the crowd on his side.
The golf overshadowed everything over the weekend. I saw people giving out about the size of the crowds at matches and you can be sure there are plenty of reasons for the low attendances. But McIlroy chasing the Masters is bound to be one of them. If you were from Cavan and you’re into golf, would you be heading up the road to Omagh for a late afternoon throw-in when McIlroy is on the first tee at 7.30? Doubtful.
We all live in the real world. The GAA is what it is, but sometimes it gets overtaken by bigger things. I played in a Munster final against Cork in 2002 that was on the same afternoon as Ireland were playing Spain in the World Cup. While we were doing a warm-up at the Crokes pitch across from Fitzgerald Stadium, the soccer match went to penalties. Sure, what could we do, only watch it?
Our only saving grace was that the Cork lads had the same distraction as us and the game ended up in an 0-8 to 0-8 draw before they beat us well in the replay a few weeks later. That was back when this fixture had some bit of cut to it. Those games have always made me wary of Cork coming into the summer and stopped me from trusting whatever bad spell they might be going through in any given year.
But despite my usual best efforts, I just can’t make an argument for them getting anywhere close to Kerry this weekend. I can’t find a silver lining for Cork at all. Even if Kerry aren’t at 100 per cent, they’ll surely have plenty in hand when they go to Páirc Uí Chaoimh on Saturday night.
Cork always had anger on their side when they played Kerry in the championship. There was always a good band of the players who were at the same colleges as the Kerry lads and who played in the same teams as them and who’d go into these Munster championship matches thinking, “Well sure I’m every bit as good as your man over there; why are they such raging hot favourites to beat us?”
I don’t see any of that any more. Cork have plenty of good players and their clubs have done plenty of winning in Munster and beyond over the past few years. I’ve been at a lot of the underage games as well in recent years and they’re holding their own at that level too. But when it comes to senior intercounty, they go into their shell around Kerry.
I don’t think they’re hurting enough. I don’t think they’re annoyed enough. It feels to me as though they’ve seen Kerry disappear off into the distance and thought, “Well, sure that’s Kerry out of reach now, we may as well focus on the teams we have a chance of beating instead.”
If I was in the Cork dressingroom, that kind of thinking would be driving me up the walls. I’d be going around finding every angle I could to tap into some bit of grievance. I’d be going on about the fact that Kerry went away for a week in Portugal so close to the championship.
“Those training weeks leave a mark, lads. Everyone knows you aren’t right for a few weeks after it. Aren’t they very arrogant to be taking us so lightly? That’s what they think of us. They’re not one bit annoyed about us.”
The best interview I saw over the weekend was Shane Lowry’s one where he got pissed off at being asked about McIlroy. At a certain point, that has to be Cork’s answer, too. Some part of them has to be going, “We’re not just here to make up the numbers. We’re not just the tomato cans for Kerry to beat around. We’re a serious proposition.”
Anger is a great thing if you use it. Cork’s big problem is that they have to find it first.
