ON the field of play Niall Cahalane was never one to shy away from any task, and the latest inductee to the West Cork Sports Star Hall of Fame dismissed equal comparison with another former recipient, Bantry and Cork great Declan Barron.
'No, I think Declan Barron was probably one of the greatest of them all, and, probably for different reasons, didn't get enough out of himself. I think Barron was just absolutely out of this world,’ the Castlehaven and Cork football legend said.
Pausing to reflect as he clutched his award at the Celtic Ross Hotel on Saturday night, he added ‘It's a nice honour for sure. Fabulous, there's no doubt.'
Having listened to Southern Star sports editor Kieran McCarthy chart his great career during the gala banquet, Cahalane admits the game has changed immeasurably.
'Changed completely and I played into my 40s, which is still a long time ago, it's changed dramatically,’ he said.
One of those changes is the structure of the season.
'I'm not too sure if this so-called split season that they talk about – and we're only a couple of years into it – and the nuts and bolts of how it will work going forward. I think there are too many games and they (the players) need a little bit of downtime,’ Cahalane mused.
‘If you're an inter-county footballer or hurler and you're going to the wire with your county every year, and you're turning around a week later and you're starting with your club – and maybe could be a dual player – I'm of the opinion it's just a little bit too much.
'The players are still our raw material, the GAA are nothing without them. In Cork we have a list of great administrators, all down through the years, we have had great administrators in the GAA over the years, every county with fabulous support and what have you, but at the end of the day, we have no entertainment without the players.’
Niall Cahalane is presented with the Hall of Fame award by special guest Lisa Fallon.Cork and Kerry rivalry was an intrinsic part of Cahalane's playing career. Nowadays, and with discussions on the merit of provincial championships, he admits the intensity of those battles has dropped.
‘The Cork-Kerry rivalry has been questionable over the last decade or less, I'm sure there's a similar situation in Leinster and maybe to a lesser degree in Ulster,’ the former Cork captain said.
‘For me, there was something special about Munster finals, especially in Killarney, and more so when you could beat Kerry in Killarney in a Munster final. If you got all the three of them, you were on a roll. Killarney back in the 80s and 90s, June, July, Sundays walking across the car park before the game and the tarmac boiling under your runners, traffic jams in Macroom, or maybe in our earlier days, traffic jams in Glengarriff, when we decided we'd go over the mountain, there was always something special about a Cork-Kerry Munster final. I played in front of crowds of 47,000 and 50,000 people.'
A pure adrenalin rush?
‘Oh absolutely, no doubt, there's nothing like playing in front of a crowd, and they're fired up for it.’
Harping back to the changing dynamic and the now close to 40-member county panels, there's more reflection and a thought for change.
'I believe it's putting a lot of pressure on players. I'm not saying for one minute that they shouldn't have 36 and 40 on a panel. What you have is lads going in and training, and probably playing, you know, testing themselves night after night after night. It has to improve, but I think where we are a little bit short-sighted, outside of the probably the first 20 player), all the rest of these players should be left to play league games with their club. Maybe not train with their club, but they certainly should be encouraged to play league games,’ Cahalane said.
The implementation of the new rules this weekend brings an interesting response.
'There was certainly something needed, but what that something was, I don't know,’ he said.
‘One of the best club games that I've seen for a long time was Errigal Ciarán and Dr Crokes in the All-Ireland Club semi-final. You couldn't take your eye off it for a second. So why can two clubs from either end of the country meet and serve up that type of a performance?
‘Yes, there was a good element of defence with it, teams are going defensive now anyway, but it's how the opposition deal with it. Is the opposition willing to take that on head on? Or do they want to just play ball out around the outskirts? Change is one thing, but having the solutions, having the answers is another thing.’
He queries: ‘Is it too much to take on at once? I think maybe we could have tweaked it a small bit. Of course the hand passing is overdone, no doubt, they could have tweaked that a little bit. These new rules aren't going to make you have any less hand passing.
'I'm not sounding negative, but I just think it's too much change. If you take the game in my time, there was an art in taking a free and kicking it over the bar off the ground. There was an art in taking the sideline ball off of the ground. There was an art in all of these things and they dropped them easy enough without kind of even going back and saying, should we revisit it again?’
The prospect of the Cork County Board taking over the administration of the divisional organisations is something that Cahalane considers could happen, albeit sometime in the future and he explains his reasoning.
‘It could happen. Most counties are run by paid professionals, CEOs or secretaries or whatever they want to call them. They have a tier of full time employees under them,’ Cahalane said.
‘You take the Carbery board here, there's still the foot soldiers that go to their meetings, that run a good show, run a good gig. But how long are those people going to keep that going? And the youth will not come into it, they don't have the time.
'People in the past didn't have the time either, but they made time. You just have these people, individuals in every parish, in every division, that just gave their life to it. I'm not too sure if we have the next generation coming up that will give their life to it, so that's why it could change.'
