Cork minors’ embarrassing route out of championship should raise serious questions

A sad state of affairs.

The Cork minor footballers played two championship games in the last month, and now their campaign is over for the year. In their year opener, the Rebel minors gave Waterford a 27 point clipping. Now we're all well aware that a non-contest like that is absolutely no good for the winners so Bobby O'Dwyer's men were effectively going into Wednesday night's Munster semi-final against Kerry cold. If they'd lost that game against Waterford, they'd have had a proper run at it. They've definitely played challenge games, organised training games, they've undoubtedly left no stone unturned in preparing for this one over the last four, five, maybe even six months, but you can prepare all you want and it will still boil down to the fact that the championship is a completely different ball game. A ball game that none of their players had really experienced prior to the biggest game of their lives to date. And the man put in the most awkward position of all was Bobby O'Dwyer. The intensity is on a different level, the stakes are much higher, the pressure isn't even a distant relation to a friendly match. Some players will flourish in the championship environment, some won't, but before their year-definer, the Cork manager was to have no real clue as to how his players were going to react it. Worse than that, the players didn't even have any experience to cling on to. And now Cork's year is over. The Leesiders put up a brave fight and for the majority of the Austin Stack Park tit for tat thriller with neighbours and bitter rivals Kerry, it was the men in red who looked like the more likely victors. Leading 0-7 to 1-3 early on in the second half, they were the better team up to then. But Kerry, with all the confidence of a side with 26 wins in their last 26 games in this grade put the foot down and kicked on to win it by the bare minimum. 1-11 to 1-10. Cork, crestfallen, Cork eliminated. The worst part of it all is that if Cork were to have lost their game against Waterford, they wouldn't have had to play Kerry at this early stage. They'd have had more of a chance to build up a head of steam, this bunch of young players would probably now have a date in Croke Park ahead of them. They'd instead have been drawn Tipperary and Clare in the play-offs, two teams they would really have fancied themselves against. Two teams they could have not feel hard done by losing to anyway. And when a team gets a few wins behind them, that's when the dander is up, that's when they show what they're really capable of. Who knows what might have happened if they met Kerry later on in this competition? But now they must just feel hard done by, now they must just feel sickened. Where's the common sense in it all? In a system where they were basically punished for winning, what way is that to encourage talented young sports people to stay playing the GAA? Clare put forward a motion to revamp the minor championship at GAA congress recently, only to have it shot down. Cork know where they're coming from now. It all boils down to the ridiculousness of the provincial structures. Why should teams be punished for their place on the map?