Cork V Tyrone Taliban Preview

18th Aug 2009

Cork V Tyrone Preview

The Tyrone Taliban bringing Sam Maguire back to the UK

With all the talk about this fear we're supposed to have of Tyrone's footballers you'd think Cork's footballers were some junior B backwater outfit slapped together after forty five phone calls at half nine on a damp Sunday morning bank holiday. You know the type of scenario…

Eventually enough 'victims' willing to forego their hangovers are found to put a team out albeit the team has the local priest in goal (after he agreed to cancel 11 O'Clock mass), two altar boys as corner forwards and three shivering forty-four year olds half backs - the big woollen jackets they insist on wearing in the rain being the closest thing to a 'blanket defence' they can muster.

As they wait for their opposition to arrive at the pitch it doesn't offer much consolation that the full back is asking around for a spare fag while the two midfielders are taking turns vomiting (although that's not always seen as a bad thing - RTE panellist Joe Brolly has never been one to condemn Ulster's brand of puke-football).

Not that anyone is entirely sure who is acting as the 'bainisteoir' the team talk usually involves helping the unfortunate volunteers to remember the rules. "No double bouncing now lads - that's a free and make sure you rise the caid and don't pick it up straight off the ground.".

Do you think this giant will be afraid of Tyrone???

A final message to the troops, as the other team's shining minibus rolls up the lane, mixes practicality with, what could be on another day, mistaken for the wisdom of a sporting philosopher, "lads, laziness is a always free out but stupidity is a free in.".

Trotting from the sanctity of the corrugated shed towards the sodden pitch the team's sense of confusion is almost as big as the fear of the sight of their challengers - or executioners: squad of fit, muscular, pumped-up twenty-something males gunning for action, determined to avenge the enforced sobriety of a Saturday night on their Sunday morning victims.

The insinuation that Cork's footballers will be in a similar state of mind as the All-Ireland Champions run out on to Croke Park on Sunday is an insult. Far from the wincing altar boy corner forwards Cork, for one, have monstrosities of men on their panel.

Seventeen out of a squad of thirty are over six foot three. Michael Cussen is six foot seven and the Cork selectors have to contact air traffic control every time he runs onto a pitch. Nicholas Murphy, just two inches of altitude lower, often has to have his head warmed up at half time to stop mountainous snow building up on his towering noggin.

Centre forward Pearse O'Neill is so large and dangerous that it is no secret he has to be transported to matches in a pallet surrounded by yards of bubble wrap - not to molly-coddle the Cork footballer himself but to protect the public from his deadly frame.

Mickey Harte and squad members at a press conference this week.

Noel O'Leary is so intimidating that he once cut the long grass in Pairc Úi Rinn by roaring at it from the sideline. Like the turf at Flower Lodge we expect the red hands of Ulster to wilt just as easily under the red feet of Cork's skilful footballers.

Anthony Lynch is so quick and awesome that few forwards can ever find a way around him. In fact most Kerrymen find it easier to get through Macroom's traffic than find a route around the 'Ballyvourney Barricade'.

We have it on good authority from a source at County Hall that a planning application for a bypass around Lynch has been submitted by a C.Cooper of Killarney, Co. Kerry.

A reply was sent to the applicant c/o the Munster Football Final but was returned with "no longer at this address" stamped on it.

So the mind boggles as to how Cork are supposed to be in fear of Tyrone when such beastly super humans await Michey Harte's squad.

Of course we, in Cork, respect the Ulstermen and their minor achievements but it's a sort of respect that may only extend to offering a hand to carry the wounded from the pitch when the likes of Miskella, Canty and Kerrigan explode into action.

Lynch: having a laugh with Cooper.

For those getting carried away with Tyrone's greatness remember that Cork have won Sam Maguire twice as many times as Tyrone. And football is their trump card - we don't need to tell you about Tyrone's hurling accolades because it would fit between the last letter in this sentence and the full stop.

Nobody's saying we haven't been to Croke Park before and had our hopes rained on but this team have been looking more and more like champions all season so we're backing the Rebels this Sunday to win by a significant margin and send the co-architects of Ulster's "puke-football" back to their drawing boards.