June 11, 2008. It’s three days after Cork have been beaten by Tipperary in a Munster semi-final. Ben and Jerry O’Connor are at an Adidas launch in Portmarnock and both are stewing.
One of the sources of the twins’ anger becomes clearer later in the year when Ben speaks on behalf of the players against Gerald McCarthy remaining on as manager, and another strike follows.
But for now their ire is directed at others.
Jerry bristles when there is mention of the age profile of the Cork team. Babs Keating had claimed the defeat marked “the end of the road for the team” a couple of days before.
“I’m sick of hearing crap like that, to be honest with you,” says Jerry. “And pardon the French. You have Seán Óg (Ó hAilpín) there last Sunday, a man with more hurling, and who’s trained harder than anyone on the panel and he’s still raring. You tell me he’s tired or over the hill, and he’ll tell you a different story. I don’t believe that at all.”
Jerry doesn’t stop there.
“I was walking off the field last Sunday, and all a Tipp supporter roared at me was ‘you better go on strike again’. And just left then. Horrible comments like that will be kept in the back of the head for future reference, and by God, if we get another chance, hopefully we’ll make people like that suffer.”
In conversations with journalists later that same day, Ben refers to the same comment that was directed at Jerry. It was an encounter that impacted him as much as his sibling.
Losing a second successive Munster semi-final was as new to the O’Connors as being on the wrong side of a championship result against Tipperary.
It was the first time in 16 years that Cork’s old rivals had bested them in the SHC, ending a five-game winning streak.
As a player, Ben O’Connor’s own championship record read five wins and four defeats.
Four straight victories including back-to-back Munster finals in 2005 and ’06 followed by three consecutive losses in as many years (2007-09).
Outside of facing Kilkenny and Waterford, a lot of O’Connor’s best hurling came against Tipperary.
In those nine matches, he amassed 2-37, 2-16 from play.
Tipp have hardly haunted O’Connor but they have left a mark or two. Two years ago, he bemoaned a contentious refereeing decision going against his U20s in their one-point Munster final defeat.
William Buckley’s shot was pushed up into the net by Tipp goalkeeper Eoin Horgan. Shown the replay on TG4 afterwards, O’Connor said the umpire should “get his glasses”.
While acknowledging his side’s 11 second-half wides, he was exercised about what followed the ghost goal.
“What I’d be more disappointed about is that the player (Aaron O’Halloran) lay on the ball afterwards.
“If you lie on the ball out the field, it’s a free straightaway. He was able to lie down on the ball for nine or 10 seconds and then it was cleared. We got nothing out of it – at least if we had got a free, we’d have had a point out of it.”
O’Connor wouldn’t need to be reminded that Dónal Óg Cusack was whistled for doing the same in the 2007 All-Ireland quarter-final and Eoin Kelly sent over a free to force a replay, which Waterford won.
That second day would have been one of the “plenty of bad days” he experienced “and it didn’t bother me”, O’Connor spoke about ahead of the league last month.
As it was for him, he insisted his players won’t be dogged by what happened last July.
O’Connor’s language is plain and sharp and the potency in his message is all in its consistency. To not go out and win is not in his make-up. It goes back to his playing days when he once insisted in this newspaper that “it’s not an honour to play for Cork, it’s an honour to win for Cork”.
But, as he said so himself last weekend, this Saturday is “the standout league fixture”.
To beat Tipperary carries that little bit more weight. Even more so now. Even if it’s only February.
