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Ireland’s most hated county
By Eamonn O'Molloy
 We
bring you 10 things to hate about Cork – recipients of Ireland’s
most dubious honour.
IT’S OFFICIAL. After months of pissing off the nation in a uniquely
Cork way, the Rebels are number one. Top of the pile. They are now, after
decades of trying, the most hated county in Ireland.
For years, try as they might, they just couldn’t quite dislodge
Dublin as the entity all of Ireland desperately despised. Hurling people
might always have held this passion for langer-loathing but hurling’s
reach is not nationwide.
Now, after becoming the handy out for an opinion piece in both the front
and back sections of our newspapers for the whole winter, Cork have claimed
what they would see as their rightful perch, looking down on all of the
land as the most disliked sporting body on our island.
Don’t get us wrong: The culchie soul will still feel an inner nirvana
every time the Dubs crash out of the Championship.
But hating them has become a little irrelevant. They are like England.
Irish people used to hate that country’s soccer team because back
in the early-to-mid-90s, there was an unspoken fear that they might just
win whatever tournament they were in.
Now there’s little hope of England winning anything and so hating
them is pointless. Indeed, as with the Dubs, there is sort of a perverse
fondness there, a realisation that summer wouldn’t be the same without
watching the three lions or the three castles crashing out of the big
comp in typically comedic circumstances.
No, Dub-bashing is, like, soooo 20th century. Cork are another matter.
Distaste for all things Leeside has been growing ever stronger since about
the time toys started exiting a certain Pacific pram like scud missiles
in 2002.
And four months or so of annoyance at the intransigence emerging from
the south has pushed the nation over the edge. Here, then, on the cusps
of the blood-and-bandage return to our National Leagues, in no particular
order, are 10 things to hate about Cork.
10: James Masters
Okay, not usually the first thing to hand for such a list, however the
busy one (pictured right) is fresh in the mind after running typically
riot for Nemo Rangers on Sunday.
Lethal when teams from counties like Mayo are self-imploding around him.
No problem winning the hard ball against Limerick and he sometimes even
produces it against Kerry, a la the Munster final replay of 2006.
But will he catch balls over his head and score 0-7 in a knock-out clash
with the Kingdom, or a serious Ulster team in the last four?
Will he hell.
9: Self-aggrandisement
Roy Keane is the prime example.
Don’t worry, we’re not going to open the can of late footballs
that was Saipan. No, Keano is the case in point for Cork people’s
desperate need for their boys to be the undisputed best at everything.
Dubs can eulogise Paul McGrath or Chippy Brady or John Giles simply for
being great soccer players and leave it at that. Conversely, your columnist
once worked behind a bar where a patron had to be chucked out because
he wanted to fight another man who dared suggest that Keano was merely
the second-best footballer on the planet, after someone called Zinedine
Zidane.
Okay, the argument is a little flawed because the patron was just one
man, who quite possibly wasn’t from Cork. But he was that ignorant,
he may as well have been.
8: Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Could be a perfectly nice guy, but I doubt it, don’t you?
7: Stephen Ireland
Could be a perfectly nice guy. Only messing. He’s quite patently
a muppet.
6: It’s a kip
Alright, I’ll admit that this column has had some cracking nights
out by the Lee, even given the constant unsettling feeling that at least
half of the people present in any pub or club would quite like to fight
you.
The craic, however, has been offset by the sheer mankiness of large sections
of the city. This column’s mates are in general agreement that Cork
is one of the uglier things they’ve had to wake up and look at after
a night on the beer and take it from me, that’s saying something.
5: Getting excited about achievements that don’t matter that much
in the grand scheme of things
I first experienced this in 1990 when Ger Canning got all misty-eyed on
RTÉ because not only had Cork won the GAA double but Neptune had
won the basketball and City were about to win the Irish soccer League
(or so they thought).
I’ll give them the first two but the latter pair? Who cares?
4: Munster rugby
See above.
A triumph of marketing which I suspect is loved less for its supposed
mystique and more for the potential it provides for drunken weekends away.
3: Slang
The rest of us don’t like it and we’re not just talking about
words like langer and feak.
‘Dowcha boy’ is the one that rubs me up the wrong way. I only
discovered a couple of years ago that it means ‘I didn’t doubt
you boy’. Anyone else think the chap who came up with that was trying
too hard?
2: Fairweather fans
Cork hurlers likely to win?
Cue carloads from Bantry to Youghal and flags from Chile to the Confederacy.
Funny, I could be wrong, but Páirc Uí Chaoimh didn’t
look packed to me in the mid-90s when Limerick arrived and dished out
a beating.
And in the midst of all this, the underdog footballers die their annual
slow death in Croker with hardly a Rebel supporter in slight.
Don’t give me that guff about how far away the west Cork football
heartland is from Dublin 3. Last time I checked, Donegal was not next
to Drumcondra and Mayo was a tidy spin from Marino but neither of those
counties, despite an even lesser chance of success, have trouble drawing
a crowd.
1: The fear they might win
Where other counties might feel a little embarrassed about making such
a spectacle of themselves all winter, the boys in red just get bullthick
any time they group-hallucinate that some kind of a wronging has been
visited on them.
So then, Cork to probably do the double.Dowcha boys. |
