Not players or management
Only four times has a team lost a provincial final and then bounced back to win the following week in the qualifiers.
It’s hard and the statistics prove that teams find it almost impossible to pick themselves up after a loss.
But it has been done, and surely it’s no excuse for the laziness that Cork showed in rolling over to Kildare with 20 minutes to go in Thurles on Saturday?
So we’re just a tiny bit surprised that the former Donegal boss Jim McGuinness thinks Cork’s football team should be blaming the GAA and the way the All-Ireland series is set up for Saturday’s pathetic showing against Jason Ryan’s side.
McGuinness himself managed to do the almost-impossible, when in 2013 his team lost to Monaghan in the Ulster final and the next week beat Laois before ultimately falling short to Mayo in the last eight of the championship.
The Glenties man feels that the seeds of Cork’s loss to Kildare were sown in ther disappointing Munster replay loss to Kerry six days beforehand, as he explains in his Irish Times piece today,
“I believe the nature of Cork’s defeat is only explicable through the consequences of losing the Munster final replay to Kerry.”
“Their goals and objectives for the year were woven into the Munster final. With a setback like that, two weeks is a tight time frame in which to recover. But seven days is borderline impossible. There are the physical aspects to consider but the mental fatigue which sets in after a big championship setback can be extremely difficult for players or managers to deal with in such a short space of time.”
Earlier this year McGuinness came up with his own proposal for the championship, and he feels that his 16 teams in a two-tier format would work best. He feels that Cork were unfairly treated by the GAA in playing in Thurles less than a week after their Munster loss,
“After two big, summer-defining games against Kerry in front of a full house, Cork found themselves playing in front of 3,815 people on a wet Saturday night in Thurles. It must have felt like they were in an entirely different competition. It must have felt like a league game in February. And they couldn’t respond, probably for a whole series of reasons. Cork were asked to take part in a race on Saturday night from a standing start while their opponents were already sprinting.
“This is unfair and it is one of the reasons why I have spoken about the need for a new structure for the All-Ireland which will make league form relevant, retain the provincial championships but which also then allows for an equal playing field for all teams: 16 teams in two tiers with teams seeded from 1- 16 and knockout games. No safety net to give the bigger counties a second chance. And – this is the crucial thing – no situation where one team is building psychological momentum while another team perishes. That levelling of circumstance would bring a cut and thrust and a true edge to the competition.”
There is definitely some truth in what Jim is saying but we doubt that his pleas for change will be heard by any of the top brass in Croke Park.
And it probably won’t be enough to save Brian Cuthbert who looks likely to lose his job after Cork’s crushing loss.
H/T Irish Times
