Spooky Sight as Cusack Parks Up in Ennis

27th Oct 2015

Donal Óg’s appointment as a selector to the Clare hurling team has surprised many Cork GAA fans. It may have sounded like a terrifying Hallowe’en spectre – one of Cork’s all time great hurlers in the colours of another county - but this is not a nightmare we can wake up from. 

As fellow Corkonians of course we wish him well – but obviously not well enough that it would get in the way of Cork winning Munster or the All-Ireland final. Can you imagine the Cloyne man jumping around in celebration in Semple Stadium if Clare were to beat the Rebels in a Munster final showdown? It’s like something you’d expect to see in the Nightmare Realm horror show below on Albert Quay. What next? Roy Keane as Roy Hodgson’s number two? 

 

Will Cusack's sanity to the way of Crazy Davy's and end up like Jack Nicholson's The Shining?

If Cork and Clare do clash Donal will have to face the reality of sitting down to plot his own native county’s demise. That means very specific things like finding out if any Cork players’ are carrying injuries and matching them with pacier or more physical Clare players. He may have to utter sentences like “we can target Mark Ellis this way” or “we can put Stephen McDonnell under ferocious pressure by doing this”.  He’ll need a strong stomach.

THE CREST
Donal Óg will even have to manage the embarrassment of wearing the Clare GAA crest on his chest on match days in public. The insignia says “Na céada sa gcath; na deigheanaca as” which very roughly translates as ‘Hey Cork, we robbed your All-Ireland in 2013 when the referee played way over the allocated time, hahaha, LOL.”.

For Cork fans, seeing Donal Óg and Davy Fitz having a post-match celebration hug would be the GAA equivalent of seeing Barrack Obama and Vladimir Putin locked in a full-body bromance embrace outside the White House or Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourhino holding hands on the side-line of a London derby.

Davy is desperate to rekindle the embers of past glories and like many struggling GAA counties up and down the country the call has once again gone out for help from Cork and we have not been found wanting. We have sent them one of our best.

BLUE AND YELLOW BLUNDERBUS
Of course Donal is new to management at senior intercounty level and as much as he has an excellent hurling brain he will need to learn and make mistakes – some of them possibly catastrophic. From a Cork perspective it is far better that Donal makes these murderous mistakes at the expense of another county rather than when donning Cork colours. 
 

Lah lah lah lah lah lah

Let’s hope that, long into the future, when Donal Óg is writing his next biography and revealing the worst tactical mistakes of his career or painfully recalling the biggest trouncing he ever received as a coach that it was done in a the colours of another county and not ours.

Perhaps his time with Clare will be like an artist’s rough sketch or a doodle. Maybe Donal has some alternative ‘system’ in mind to counter Kilkenny’s puke-hurling that he really wants to try out - Davy has been banging his head against a wall for the last two years so is liable to try anything at this stage – if it ends in disaster the worst that’ll happen is that Clare will exit the championship at a more appropriately traditional time for them like early July. And that’ll be one less team in Cork’s way of All-Ireland glory. 

THE BANNER AND THE BANTER
If there’s one thing Crazy Davy’s new backroom team appointment will guarantee for the 2016 season it is that the banter will be off the scale. The digital hurlers on the ditch are already sharpening their knives for each other - no matter what happens to Clare and Cork next season the internet heroes and keyboard warriors will be out in force proclaiming told-you-so’s.

Aside from his All-Ireland medals if there’s one thing the Cloyne man has given the sporting world, like his fellow Cork man Roy Keane, it is an unrelenting conveyor belt of quotes and statements that top the list for banter-ability – especially on the internet. This latest move has once again brought out all his supporters and naysayers (and more than a few windup merchants) to pump every last syllable out of Ógie’s latest move.
 

The Rock takes no shit from Kilkenny's Martin Comerford

To add to the bantz Cusack’s club mate Diarmuid ‘The Rock’ O’Sullivan has been appointed as a selector by new Cork manager Kieran Kingston. Both Cloyne men have been very successful with underage teams of late and are well thought of as youth coaches. The former Cork team mates, who are the same age, will now face off as opponents for the Liam McCarthy Cup – providing the media, both traditional and social, with a unique rivalry to blow out of all proportion.

And like most fans we’ll be in the middle of the banter loving every second of it!