If you have ever played a team sport you will be familiar with the following situation. The ball comes your way; you gather it easily and see a teammate 30m away. As you execute a pass an opponent appears – almost out of thin air – and intercepts the ball. You feel terrible. Then some ‘ould fella shouts in from the side-line “Why didn’t ya pass the f*#@ing ball?!”

There are few more annoying things that can happen to you during a game. It is not as if you deliberately allowed the ball to be intercepted. Your opponent probably made a great play to make the interception and if you could rectify it, you would. The only thing worse is meeting the ‘ould fella after the game and he tells you again, and at length, exactly what you should have done. You listen out of respect but you are not too far from telling him to stick his opinion “where the sun don’t shine.”

I went to Páirc Uí Chaoímh last Sunday to see my club Glen Rovers play St Finbarrs in the first round of the county senior hurling championship. As far as the Glen supporters were concerned, the sun didn’t shine.  Fair play to the Barrs, though. Before the game they didn’t appear to have much vitamin D themselves, but by the time the game was over they were glowing.

I don’t think it would serve any purpose to talk about the actual game, I would be just shouting in from the sideline. There are however, aspects to last Sunday’s game, other than the result, that I would like to discuss. (Of course you would – comes the chorus from the south side.)

Last Sunday’s attendance was paltry. A little more than 2,500 I would suggest. This made for a surreal atmosphere. There was never going to be the sight of a Glen and a Barrs supporter rolling on the ground like they used to during the Eucharistic Cup games at the Mardyke. But then the crowd last Sunday did not spend the interregnum between the end of the Eucharistic Procession and the beginning of the game at the Mardyke in various hostelries between the Grand Parade and the Western Road.

The atmosphere could best be described as that of a league tie.  Once upon a time the entire GAA community looked forward to county hurling championship games involving any two of the big three city clubs. The heyday of these games was the half century between the 1920s and the 1970s. During the 1920s the big clashes were between Blackrock and St Finbarrs. After 1934 when the Glen rose to the top and Blackrock’s form dipped, the main rivalry was between the Glen and St Finbarrs. Either St Finbarrs or Glen Rovers won every one of the 19 county championships between 1932 and 1950. Blackrock started winning county senior titles again in 1956 and for the next 25 years or so; the three clubs dominated the Cork club scene. Large attendances were the order of day.

For example, the paying attendance at the 1955 county hurling final replay between the Glen and the Barrs was 31,019 (more than 24,000 saw the drawn game). The population of Cork according to the 1956 census was 336,663. That means that approximately 10% of the entire population of the city and county turned out to see the Barrs trounce the Glen in the replay.

In 1977, when Páirc Uí Chaoímh was new and shiny, and Cork and the Glen were All-Ireland county and club champions respectively, 34,151 turned up to see the Barrs win by holding the Glen scoreless in the second half. The nearest census to this was held in 1971, (The 1976 census was cancelled due to economic conditions – and you thought we have it bad now!) which showed the population of Cork County was 352,983. So once again, approximately 10% of all the men women and children in Cork turned up to see the game. The 2011 census gave the population of Cork at 518,128, this means that less than half of one per cent turned up to see last Sunday’s game.

It was not just finals that brought the crowds. I vividly remember a huge crowd at a first round game between Blackrock and the Barr’s in 1972. The Barr’s won that game and in doing so reversed the result of the rather fractious 1971 county final between the clubs.

Strangely enough the Glen and the Barrs have rarely met in the first round of the county hurling championship, whereas the Barrs and Blackrock have met at least once a decade and sometimes more. The first ever first-round meeting between the Glen and the Barrs was in the 1954 championship. The Glen won rather easily and went on to retain the county.

The sides met again in the first round of the 1965 hurling championship. Once again the Glen were championship holders having defeated the Barrs in the 1964 final. This time it was the Barrs who came out on top and they went on to win the county. That was in the middle of a very intense period of rivalry between the two clubs. The clubs met in four county finals in four years. They met in the 1964 and ’67 hurling finals and the 1965 and ’66 football finals. All those four titles ended up in Blackpool but the Barrs picked up two hurling titles in 1965 and ’68.

The next time the two teams met in a first round was in 1984. The backdrop to this game was that the Glen were itching to get revenge for two narrow county final defeats by the Barrs in 1980 and ’81 while the Barrs had lost a historic final to Midleton in 1983. The Barrs built up a big lead in the first half and then held off a strong Glen rally to win by one point. Just as in 1954 and ’65 the winners went on to win the county title.

The last big hurray of the Glen and the Barrs came in the county final of 1988. The Barrs were too experienced for a young Glen side and had a comfortable victory. About 20,000 people turned out to see that game. Little did they know it at the time, but both clubs have only won the county title once since. The Glen won it 1989 and the Barrs in 1993.

Those who love nostalgia, hanker after the days of the rivalries between the big city clubs. I would be less than honest if I didn’t say I would like to see those rivalries revived too – at least some of time. The fall-off in interest the old city rivalries raises the spectre of the decline of the role of the GAA in urban Cork. On the other hand, there have been 12 different winners of the County Senior Hurling championship since the 1988 final. This compares favourably with fact that only eight clubs won the championship between 1920 and 1988. (See the table below)

It is certainly not a bad thing that more teams have been winning the county championship. That said the county hurling championship is missing those intense rivalries. The championship needs strong rivalries to bring along the neutrals; if only to see what might happen. Which leads to the biggest question of them all; why is it that fixtures like the Glen and the Barrs, which once could draw 10% of the entire population of Cork, can now hardly draw each clubs’ membership?  If you can answer that then the glory days, and the large crowds, of the county hurling championship might be revived.

 

 

Winning teams 1920 to 1988	Number of title 1920 to 1988	Winning teams 1989 to 2011	Number of titles 1989 to 2011
Glen Rovers	24	Newtownshandrum	4
St Finbarrs	19	Erins Own	3
Blackrock	15	Blackrock	3
Midleton	3	Na Piarsaigh	3
UCC	2	Imokilly	2
Avondhu	2	Sarsfields	2
Sarsfields	2	Avondhu	1
Eire Óg	1	Carbery	1
		Carrigtwohill	1
		St Finbarrs	1
		Glen Rovers	1
		Midleton	1