Cork manager John Meyler has continued the good work of his predcessor in the role, Kieran Kingston.
By John Harrington
When Kieran Kingston stepped down as Cork manager last September after two years in charge, the common emotion amongst Cork supporters was dismay.
Kingston engineered a rapid rise in Cork’s fortunes in 2017 that saw them win the Munster Championship against the odds with a new-look, exciting young team.
The fear was that his departure would undo a lot of that good work, because there was no guarantee the transition to a new manager with new ideas would be a seamless one.
After John Meyler was announced as Kingston’s successor, those fears didn’t exactly dissipate overnight.
Meyler was in a good position to carry on Kingston’s good work because he had served as a selector under him, but he probably wouldn't have been the first name on everyone’s list of replacements when Kingston first announced he was stepping down.
The doubting voices in the background became more audible when Cork lost successive League matches to Wexford, Clare, Waterford, and Tipperary in the spring, but they’ve long since fallen silent.
Cork retained their Division 1A status by beating Waterford in a Relegation Play-Off and have now made it back to back Munster hurling titles with an unbeaten run through a ferociously contested province.
It’s safe to say that Meyler has risen to the challenge and not just continued Kingston’s good work, but built upon it.
“John had a massive challenge this year,” says Cork selector Donal O’Mahony. “To go from there to push it on another small bit. He's been fantastic. He's very, very passionate about hurling. He's very passionate about Cork hurling.
“He's a winner. That's just all he wants to do. He wants to keep it as simple as he can, he wants to win games.
“He bounces an awful lot of ideas off his son. He's brought that wealth of experience with him as well. The idea of Premiership soccer, the Championship soccer that David is playing now, he brought that to us this year.
“He came into the dressing-room after the Munster Final and said, ‘That game is over now lads. It's done, forget about it, we move on to the next game.’
“He was really rigid in that and I think it worked really, really well.
“There isn't a minute that passes in the day where he isn't thinking of how we get one per cent better."
Cork manager John Meyler pictured with his selectors Donal O'Mahony (l) and Kieran Murphy (r).
Perhaps the reason that Meyler’s appointment wasn’t universally acclaimed at the outset was because some viewed him as old-school.
He’s been on the inter-county management circuit since 1992 and was a Cork selector back in 2002 when the Rebels hurling panel famously went on strike for the first time.
Meyler has been working at the coal-face of hurling management and coaching for a long time, but according to O’Mahony he’s moved with the times thanks to an insatiable appetite for innovation.
“He'd be ringing and texting you and my wife would be laughing because the phone would be going at two in the morning and it would be John with some idea about corner-back or a training facility or something like that,” said O’Mahony.
“The amount of time and effort the man has put into it at training and between training sessions is just phenomenal. But he loves it, he loves it.
“I haven't seen a fella as passionate about it as John.
“You'd think that a lot of fellas of a generation older, their love of the game wanes because the game changes and they feel it's gone past them.
“John is very good, he's up with current thinking and he still maintains his own values. He's very strong on his values.
“He loves being at the epicentre, he loves being involved, he loves affecting change, he loves the challenge of it. But, as I said, extremely passionate about it.”
Cork manager John Meyler with his son and Republic of Ireland footballer David Meyler and Cork supporters from Bride Rovers GAA club after victory over Clare in the Munster SHC Final.
Meyler’s appointment is now looking like a very canny one. Young players like Mark Coleman, Luke Meade, and Darragh Fitzgibbon who burst onto the scene last year have further developed under the new Cork manager’s watch.
Cork are still a work in progress, but they look a little bit further down the road now than they were this time last year and will prove that beyond any doubt if they defeat Limerick in Sunday’s All-Ireland SHC semi-final.
“We're in a very good place,” said O’Mahony. “Our focus all year has been on ourselves. There's been a lot of noise on the outside about the opposition, competitions, venues and all of that, but our focus all year has been on ourselves and our training has been fantastic since the Munster Final.
“We've just brought it to another level. The whole thing is driven by the players and they've really upped the ante in the last two weeks so we're ready to go again now, we've no excuses.
“Our job as management is to create an environment for the lads to be the best that they can be and we feel that we've achoieved that.
“The lads are really ready to go, we've no excuses. We're under no illusisions that we have a massive battle ahead of us, but we're ready to go.”
