All-Ireland final: local bragging rights up for grabs

The renowned Cork comedian and actor Niall Toibin once joked that those from West Cork were merely Kerry people with shoes.

The gag, which was a popular one in this part of the country at least, I’d imagine, betrays the nature of the hard-wired rivalry that crackles between the two counties – as well as a real distrust in Cork city of our own country cousins, west of Bandon.

But if talismanic Bantry defender Graham Canty can inspire his side to victory and bring the Sam Maguire back to its birthplace in Dunmanway after this weekend, it’ll be a Rebel county, united in celebration, that will lean over the fence to taunt our defeated neighbours in the Kingdom – and choice of footwear, or lack thereof, will never again be on the agenda.

Humour – the gallows variety, mainly – has been a crutch for Cork football fans through the decades, it must be admitted. While, in Fitzgerald Stadium, Micko was in the losers’ dressing room, reassuring the visitors that they are, despite another provincial near-miss ‘the second-best team in the country’, their supporters were wending their way to Leeside, sharing a drink, strong opinion and, importantly, a joke. There’s no laugh track this week however with a tightly-scripted drama in store rather than another comedy.

With two proud sporting strongholds, living cheek by jowl, there is plenty at stake here for the Corkman. RTE will show, as part of its hyperbolic big-game build-up, groups of friends from either side of the border outside Quinn’s in Drumcondra. We’ll go to the break with a shot of a couple on Jones’ Rd, both happily offering the thumbs-up gesture – her in green and gold from head to toe, him in a snugly-fitting Barry’s Tea-emblazoned red shirt.

It would be nice – so nice – if it was, for once, the Kerry supporter sleeping on the couch this Sunday night, while the long-suffering Rebel lustily fires off a text to his Tralee-born boss, as the creaking train is stopped in Limerick Junction: “Wont b in tmw morning. Sam is home. Up d Rebels!”

In fact, the same way that ESB chiefs in charge of the national grid would juice the system in anticipation of an ad break on Coronation Street or half time in a World Cup game, so too the telephone companies will have to wheel in extra mobile phone masts to sit temporarily outside Ballydesmond to facilitate the wave of ungracious text messages that will, inevitably, flood from one side of the border as the whistle blows in Croker.

But what are the chances of us here in the second city actually getting the opportunity to hold our heads high on Monday morning? Pretty good this year obviously – we’re down to the final two and Cork, for what it’s worth are the Munster champions. And Munster champions who seemed this year to have the measure of their erstwhile masters in two provincial showdowns. But after years of disappointment, the Cork football fan – unlike that most arrogant of species, the Leeside hurling supporter – is a pessimistic breed.

After Cork City lost an FAI Cup final a few years ago, my girlfriend, who was dragged to her first showpiece sporting event, and I retired to a pub near Lansdowne Road. Watching glumly, over half-empty glasses, the crucial goals repeated on the RTE news, one fan – jaded, like his well-worn scarf, after years of setbacks with the embattled club – leant over and said: “You fall in love once; but they’ll break your heart a thousand times.” It’s not dissimilar in Gaelic football.

Ours is a county, quickly glancing at the record books, that is fifth in the football role of honour. But with 15 defeats in All-Ireland finals, we’re more familiar with heartbreak than September honeymoons – unlike our neighbours who perennially have to dust confetti from their collar.

We’ve been anaesthetised from past failures with the big ball, of course, by a shot of hurling success. That isn’t the case at the moment and the footballers’ emergence this season as a team with All-Ireland bone fides has been accented by the hurlers’ disappointing exit. And this after another winter of discontent. A defeat this weekend, to our closest neighbours and rivals will be further underlined, of course. Salt, wounds, insults and injury spring to mind.

But whereas we’re consumed by a rivalry with Kerry, one gets the feeling the Kingdom are always more preoccupied with Dublin, Tyrone or even parochial issues that rage within the county bounds. The composer Antonio Salieri was knotted with jealousy and resentment towards his progious friend Mozart, even going so far as to renounce God for blessing his rival. Amadeus, of course didn’t give him a second thought. If the self-proclaimed ‘Patron Saint of Mediocrity’ had denied him a 36th All-Ireland football crown, however, he may then have taken him seriously. Expect, some broken strings come Sunday evening, at least.

Niall Toibin, from the northside of the city and a real Corkonian with a love of gaelic games, paradoxically forged his reputation in the crucible of a Kerry play. Toibin, long before Limerick’s rugby-loving Richard Harris made it his own on the silver screen, was, after Ray McAnally, of course, the Bull McCabe in John B Keane’s The Field.

A powerful, didactic tale of, to distil it very simply, greed and neighbours. Living next door to a crowd who have hoarded seven times our wealth, in footballing terms, has taught us plenty of lessons. We here in Cork, will be hoping – and hoping – that we can teach Kerry a similar one on the biggest stage this Sunday. And then the fun will really start.

This guest column first appeared in The Kingdom newspaper.