After a damaging week, Caoimhín Kelleher has restored the reputation of Corkness

The 42

a day ago

CORK HURLING MANAGER Pat Ryan this week detonated the concept of Corkness, figuring it was the highest-value target in his war on hype.
Ryan has been astonished and perturbed at the mass Writing off of Limerick, bridling specifically at a bookmaker paying out on Cork's All-Ireland win in April and more generally at all the material with which Rebel fans have provided for plastering on the walls of Limerick's dressing room.
'The really annoying thing was some of our own people writing off Limerick. Are they off their game? That's only setting us up for a fall', said Ryan, doing his worrying out loud.
'There was a thing written ages ago around the football thing', he said, 'which I'd say [football manager] John Cleary here hates it, this thing about 'Corkness.'
'It drives me mad when I hear that thing. What's Corkness?'
Ryan need only ask his country board for the definition of the word. In 2019, Cork GAA published a five-year plan to boost their fading football fortunes and deduced what was missing was a bit of Corkness, and then-chairperson Tracey Kennedy defined the term.
Corkness, she wrote, 'is that air of confidence just on the right side of arrogance – an unparalleled pride and our insatiable desire for Cork to be the best at absolutely everything.'
Cards on the table – this column has always loved the notion of Corkness.
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This is partly because it is unique, and partly because, in the column-writing business, game recognises game.
In expounding on Corkness, Tracey Kennedy was faithful to the column writer's trick of pinning down some vast concept and slapping it with a single, evocative label. There are economists out there who have made a fortune out of this kind of business. Think your Celtic Tigers; your Breakfast Roll Mans.
(This column's side-project of coming up with a working definition of Longfordness has run aground on the difficulty of reconciling the figures of Albert Reynolds and Maura Higgins.)
Limerick manager John Kiely and Cork boss Pat Ryan. Tom Maher / INPHO Tom Maher / INPHO / INPHO
A concept like Corkness can also be a genuinely potent sporting tool, as it gives players and supporters a shared identity around which to corral.
Now, not everyone was an instant fan of Corkness' introduction to the Irish vernacular.
'We're only just into February but surely no more ludicrous pat of steaming bullshit will get dropped into sporting discourse in 2019″, wrote Brian O'Connor in the Irish Times.
Six years on, diplomacy probably dictates that Pat Ryan couldn't quite go down the 'ludicrous pat of steaming bullshit' route, but he has made his point forcefully enough.
Ryan evidently believes Corkness is a licence to indulge excessive and self-defeating levels of self-confidence, but in defence of the word, its definition does preach a certain amount of restraint. It's not supposed to be a real arrogance, Jamie Redknapp might tell us, but that lovely arrogance.
Anyway, in a week that risked Corkness becoming irredeemably traduced as the Cork Mind Virus, along came Caoimhín Kelleher to restore the whole idea.
Kelleher will be a first-choice goalkeeper in the Premier League next season and, in his own words, it's not a moment too soon. Asked by his new club Brentford as to whether it was a difficult decision to leave Liverpool, Kelleher replied, 'I don't think it was very difficult for me to leave. I felt for my own career that the time was right for me to go, to be a no.1 and to play every week.'
Kelleher's career success so far is built on his confidence. That quality is evident whenever you see him play: few Irish sportspeople have ever been so obviously laconic and unflustered in the arena.
He had the confidence to see off the legions of academy hopefuls to force his way into the first-team mix under Jurgen Klopp and the confidence to believe he deserved to stay there.
He then had the confidence to play the way in which Liverpool needed him – stand still to bait an opponent's press and flirt with a humiliating error before getting his pass away; score the odd cup-winning penalty – and the confidence to deal with the awesome scrutiny that comes with playing in goal for a superclub.
Mistakes by a goalkeeper are amplified over those by any other player, and there's an exponential amplification of any error at a club as big as Liverpool. You need a special strain of, well, Corkness to deal not only with mistakes but also the dark thoughts of making a future one.
And above all, he had the confidence to leave. Kelleher is not joining Brentford to become their record appearance holder as, stop us if you've heard this before, he's showing the confidence in himself to go on and play regularly at a higher level. 'They've got a really good track record of improving and developing players which is really what's drawn me to the club', said Kelleher of his new employers.
Ringmahon Rangers have also millions of reasons to celebrate their own kind of Corkness, as they had the confidence to insist on a 20% sell-on clause when Liverpool signed Kelleher. The game's apex predator clubs are not in the business of looking after anyone else, which they would deem charity. Innumerable Irish clubs have given in to pressure and allowed their biggest talents go to celebrated UK clubs for disgracefully little money. Ringmahon were not willing to fall into the trap.
Ringmahon and Kelleher this week showed the rewards awaiting those who maintain confidence in themselves.
Let the Corkness abide.