Cork senior football manager Ronan McCarthy.
By Cian O'Connell
Ronan McCarthy remained calm.
From the outside Cork football was deemed to be on the slide, but the 2019 Championship campaign provided hope and then a couple of underage All Ireland underage titles were collected.
Suddenly optimism is in the air Leeside and the future glimmers with some promise.
"I’d say it all helps," McCarthy remarks about the development of the game in Cork.
"What I would say is one of the things about our management team over the last number of years is, you know, when people were getting very excited - be it in 2018 with our Championship defeats or relegation last year - I suppose we kept things on a fairly steady and even keel."
Small steps were taken and reaching the All Ireland Quarter-Final Group Phase offered significant encouragement.
"We’re very realistic with the players and what we expect of them, what I mean by that is that, I suppose we gave a good account of ourselves in the Super Eights last year," McCarthy adds.
"We had four games against the four best teams in the country last year, that were all must win matches. We played Donegal in Round 6 of the league in Pairc Ui Rinn that they had to win for promotion and we needed to win obviously to help us in our relegation fight.
Ronan McCarthy believes there is significant potential in his Cork team.
"Then we obviously had the three matches in the Super Eights. In all the games we were very very competitive, but we didn’t win any of them."
Taking a serious scalp is what Cork currently crave.
"I suppose the next step for the team, and we’ve made this clear, is that we’ve got to win, we’ve got to start beating the big teams in the big Championship games," McCarthy admits.
"We’re not going to hide away from that, that’s the next step in the development of the team. Overall, you try and take an overview of the development of the group and certainly it seems to be on an upward trajectory, but we won’t lose the run of ourselves - win or lose - in the game on the 8th of November."
Ensuring Cork make progress in the coming years is critical.
"Try to keep a nice, steady, consistent approach on the development of the team," McCarthy states.
"You can undo years of good work very quickly, it can all unravel very quickly, and that’s why it’s important to make considered decisions looking at the medium and long-term development of the group and the team, and football in the county.
"I think we are going in the right direction now, there will be positives and setbacks along the road, but nice and steady is how she goes basically is how we try to look at it."
