Every county manager or player, when asked, professes that the best way to reach the All-Ireland series is through the ‘front door’ or winning their provincial title.
Whether such a journey provides an advantage is called into question, however, when Cork have played two championship matches since beating Mayo in the league final at the end of April.
Given that their most recent outing, the Munster final against Clare, was a procession, there may be fears that Cork are lacking match practice ahead of Sunday’s game with Kildare. Captain Graham Canty just takes the approach of getting on with the job, however.
“It’s the way the structure is. We were straight into a Munster semi-final, the management knew that and they planned for it. If we had lost to Kerry, we’d have readjusted. Ideally you’d look for more match practice but you try to bring a huge intensity to your training and get the 15-on-15 in-house games going well.
“It’s the way cards have been dealt for us. You’d be more frustrated and upset if we weren’t in the championship in August and preparing for a game next Sunday.”
Since winning the Munster final on July 8, Cork had been left in the limbo of not knowing their All-Ireland quarter-final opponents until last Saturday evening’s draw pitted them with the Lilywhites.
Canty isn’t too worried about that fact and feels that his side have been able to work on their own game in the interim.
“You’d probably like to have known who you were playing,” he says, “but it’s a good excuse to focus on yourself and think about what you’re going to bring to the game.
“The management were able to try a few things in training which will hopefully help us.”
So focused have the Rebels been in their intra-squad practice matches that on more than one occasions tensions have reached boiling point, but Canty views that as a good thing.
“Yeah they have been competitive, there has a good edge to it over the last few weeks,” he says.
“In every training session there’d be some minor incident when it spills over, and if that doesn’t happen, it’s been a poor training session. If there’s not a minor thing between one or two players, you’re thinking we’re not going well.
“You want to replicate the championship intensity so you need that edge to happen. A lot of the time we don’t shake hands after those incidents, we view it as minor and about driving on for the rest of the session.
“It’s very easy to have that hunger when there’s competition for places.”
Cork have a full squad available for the game, leaving manager Conor Counihan and his selectors a tough task when picking their team tonight. Such is the competition that Canty doesn’t feel his captaincy insulates him against the risk of being dropped.
“Definitely not,” he says. “Conor’s job is to pick the best team. Captain or no captain, ten years or six months on the panel, it doesn’t matter. You pick the best team.”
As one of the longest-serving members of the Cork panel, Canty is one of the few current players to have played against Kildare manager Kieran McGeeney, and also played alongside him for Ireland in the International Rules series against Australia.
Being at such close quarters allowed him to admire the Armagh man as a player and now he sees what a good manager he is as well.
“Yeah, I played league games against Armagh, also played with him in Australia and a couple of games in Ireland as well.
“We’d have come across each other, he brought great commitment as a player.
He usually played centre-back and had great vision. His kick-passing was always excellent, I thought.
“He was a great fella to motivate teammates and he always lead by example with his actions on the pitch. He captained Armagh to an All-Ireland title in 2002 for the first time ever and that shows what high esteem he’s held in.
“I think he’s done a decent job in Kildare assembling a very good panel. He always had leadership and management credentials. He’s built away with his back room team and I think Kildare are a very solid side. It’s just been fine lines between them progressing to All-Ireland semi-finals and finals.”
Fine lines are something Cork have encountered too, most notably on the way to winning the 2010 All-Ireland, when narrow wins were achieved against Limerick, Dublin and Down.
Canty knows if a second title in three years is to be claimed then they will need to be on the right side of the tight encounters again.
“That’s it in sport, but I fully believe in sport you make your own luck,” he says.
“If you’re good enough you will get a chance and if you’re really good you’ll take it.
“In 2010 we went to extra time against Limerick, they pushed us really hard and the same thing happened to Kildare recently. They’re the tough games you need.”
With wins against Cavan, Limerick and Sligo behind them, Kildare have the momentum, but Canty hopes that a clear training scheduled will have benefited Cork more.
“They do have momentum, but the last few weeks we’ve been lucky to have the club fixtures rescheduled.
“We’ve a good body of work done and you’re hoping that is enough. We haven’t had injury problems to the same extent this year. Last year we were missing a very similar type of player, a scoring forward.
“It’s very hard to replace all of them. It was a big drain on our resources.”