Cork boss Pat Ryan: 'You have to win All-Irelands' to succeed as manager
In January 2023, the new Cork manager was asked if his reign would be deemed a failure should Liam MacCarthy not return to Leeside at some point before close of business this summer.
'It would be a failure, yeah,' he replied. Are they words he still stands by?
'I would. I won't back away from stuff I've said before. You'll be judged by other people, but my judgement as a Cork person, as a person who's played, as a person who's watched games and been involved in going to matches when we won All-Irelands in the 80s and 90s, that's what's expected,' he reaffirmed.
'That's the expectation when you take on the job, that you're going to win All-Irelands. If you don't, is failure the right word? It's probably a harsh word at times. But it's true, to be honest, because you have to win All-Irelands if you're going to be the Cork manager. You have to win All-Irelands. It's as simple as that. You don't shy away from that.'
And neither does he shy away from the players' job to honour the red shirt given the connotations it carries.
While so much of the focus over the past fortnight has been on match specifics, Ryan has not been reluctant to lean into tradition, what the shirt represents, and doing the shirt justice on Sunday.
'That's the standard. That's what we have to live to is what the Cork jersey represents to the people of Cork. Fellas might say tis cocky or arrogant, we haven't won an All-Ireland in 20 years, but I'm talking about my generation. That's the way I grew up. The Cork jersey has to mean something to everyone, every time you put it on.
'The players I grew up idolising in the 80s, there was no soccer, no rugby. The Teddy McCarthys, the Tomás Muls, the Jim Cashmans, the Jimmy Barry Murphys, the Seánie O'Learys, they were gods.
"And there's an expectation that we wear the jersey as well as they did, and do we lean into it? Yeah, you bet your life we do. Look, it's a good thing to come from.
'I listened to a Bernard Dunne podcast recently and he spoke with James McCarthy about that. James said that when he was with Dublin, there's a way that Dublin should play and there's a way that Dublin should carry themselves, and I just said, 'Jesus, that makes total sense'.'
One final new belief of Pat's. Inter-county hurling is a 'grown-ass sport'. Its participants must be thus treated as such. Birth cert details are irrelevant.
He eulogised earlier this week on Gary Keegan's value in the one-to-one conversations that he's had with the Cork manager and players.
Equally illuminating and equally effective were the one-to-one conversations Ryan had with his players in the downtime after the 2024 season so crushingly concluded and the latest climb began.
'Sometimes you try to be as honest as you can with players and then sometimes you're probably trying not to hurt feelings.
"A lot of the players would have come to me and said maybe you just need to be a bit more honest sometimes with us and just tell us what we need to do exactly.
'Sometimes you might be, for want of a better word, pussyfooting around the situation, but it was being a bit more direct. That is something that I've done this year.'
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