For Cork star Paul Kerrigan, victory against Down on the third Sunday of September would see him join an elite club of which his father is already a member. Nemo Rangers, Cork and Ireland Compromise Rules star of the past Jimmy Kerrigan spoke to Hogan Stand.

History, as they say, has a habit of repeating itself. Looking at the current Cork side, there are definite echoes of the Cork team of the 1980s, who seemed to be contenders for a number of years before finally making the breakthrough. Jimmy Kerrigan, the father of current Cork forward star Paul, was a stalwart of the side which finally tasted September glory, having been part of the Cork senior set-up for more than a decade. When Sam Maguire finally came home in the autumn of '89, he was one of the elder statesmen of the team, alongside a number of players who had graduated from Cork's All-Ireland U21 three-in-a-row heroes of '84-'86.

For Cork then, read Cork now. "One comparison between the teams is that there are some old fellas and some young fellas," says Kerrigan. "Back then you had a few lads who had been around for a good few years, myself, Dinny Allen, Conor Counihan, Dave Barry, and you had a lot of good young lads who had come through from the U21s. This team is similar in a way, in that you have fellas like Graham Canty and Derek Kavanagh, alongside up and coming players such as Paul, Colm O'Neill, Ciaran Sheehan and Aidan Walsh."

The entire Cork panel, their families and the supporters will be overjoyed if a 20-year hiatus between All-Ireland football triumphs comes to an end with victory over Down, but another emotion might well outweigh the jubilation, and again there are valid comparisons with Jimmy's own side of the late '80s.

"I suppose, if they win, a lot of fellas will be relieved," he says. "That was the thing I felt when we won in '89. We were going in against Mayo and everyone was expecting us to win, so when we did it was definitely relief. We'd been together a long time and there were times when I thought we'd never win one, and I'm sure it's the same for this team. There are a lot of young players who've come through from the U21s but the team has been knocking on the door for a few years now, and a few of the senior fellas will be relieved if they can finally get their hands on an All-Ireland medal."

Much has been talked and written about the changes in the game over the past two decades, with the emergence of Ulster, led by Down, Donegal and Derry in the early '90s and the subsequent ground-breaking methods of Armagh and Tyrone. As a star performer in his own heyday and now watching from afar as his son earns similar plaudits in the modern era, Kerrigan is well placed to talk about the transformation.

So how does he see it?

"I was sitting at Croke Park for the semi-final [Cork against Dublin]," he says, "and looking down at the field, players were everywhere. Paul lined out at half forward but he was back at corner back at times. Tyrone, the way they interchange all the time, with wing backs or corner backs coming up and taking scores, and forwards back in defence, they changed the whole thing. When we were playing people stuck fairly rigidly to their positions, but everyone plays everywhere now.

"It's a completely difference type of football these days. Cork are building slowly from the back, some people might think it looks lethargic in a way. A lot of coaching is aimed at getting men behind the ball when you lose possession. Teams seem to be too afraid of losing. I think it was a bit different in our time. In our day every second game was a great game but nowadays you could go one end of the year to the other without seeing a good game of football. I don't think we talked about too many tactics in training."

To a greater or lesser extent it may always have been the case, but Kerry have certainly been the bêtes noires of this Cork team in recent times, coming out on top in Croke Park head-to-heads for five successive years between 2005 and 2009. The Kingdom also won after a replay and extra-time in June before coming up well short against Down in the quarter-finals. To many, that surprise result opened the door for Cork to rise to the top of the pile, and Conor Counihan's men - All-Ireland favourites before a ball was kicked following their impressive NFL triumph in the spring - remain the market-leaders going into the game against Down. Is there a danger, though, that an All-Ireland title will be devalued by the failure to beat Kerry en route?

"I don't know about that," hits back Kerrigan. "An All-Ireland is an All-Ireland, no-one cares who you beat on the way. Kerry and Tyrone weren't good enough this year but that won't matter to anyone in Cork if we do what we have to do against Down."

In that regard, and notwithstanding Down's emergence from the shadows as a side of real quality this year, Kerrigan will be hugely disappointed if Cork fail to get over the line. "This should be Cork's time," he says. "They've lost finals before, and sometimes you have to go through that to get the experience you need. They proved that against Dublin, they just kept going and Dublin crumbled, and that should stand to Cork. It was a bit like us in '83. We played Dublin in the semi-final [the game went to a replay at Pairc Ui Chaoimh] and we really fancied our chances of winning, but they had been in a lot of finals and semi-finals before and they had the edge on us. Down don't have that experience. You never know, though, that might stand to them too. They're a young team and they'll be going into the game without any worries."

Jimmy's son Paul has been making giant strides - usually at breakneck pace - in recent years to emerge as one of the country's pre-eminent forwards. How does junior compare to the father? "Ah," says Jimmy, "he's a completely different player than I was. He's much faster for a start and since he was a kid, he's always played in the forwards. I played one year in the forwards [in '87, Cork's All-Ireland final defeat to Meath] and I didn't enjoy it!

"Paul can count himself lucky too. I started playing with Cork in 1978 and I didn't get to my first All-Ireland final until '87. Paul is only there a couple of years and he has already won a couple of Munsters and he's about to play in his second All-Ireland in a row. It's unbelievable really."
While Paul is on his way to the very top, and has already placed a considerable amount of silverware in safe-keeping, he still has some way to go to emulate his father. Jimmy Kerrigan's list of honours stretches on and on. And on. Four times a Munster senior football champion and twice an All-Ireland winner with Cork; captain of both the Cork and Nemo Rangers teams in 1984, the year he won his third of five All-Ireland club championships with the exceptional city side; All-Ireland U21 winner in 1980; National Football League winner in 1980 and '89; and a member of the Ireland side for the Compromise Rules series against Australia in 1984 and '86.

He must have dozens of cherished memories, so which one keeps coming back to him when he closes his eyes and indulges in a bit of reflection? "I would say the 1983 Munster final," he says without much hesitation. "Kerry were going for nine Munsters in a row that day. Tadhg Murphy punched the winning goal in injury time, and Kerry had no time to respond. I'd been there for a few years already but I thought I'd never win a Munster until that day."

The yearning for a first provincial medal was satisfied on July 17th, 1983, but despite Cork's standing as one of the best teams in the country during that decade, a first All-Ireland sovereign didn't come his way until more than six more years later. And Jimmy admits that he almost walked away from it all before the breakthrough. "I was always a back but I was played in the forwards in '87 and after that I was dropped," he recalls. "I was jacked off with not getting a game. I suppose you always think it when you're sitting in the subs but I felt I was better than some of the players who were on. I had an urge to jack it in, but Dave Barry pulled me aside one day and said 'Hang in there'. Lucky enough I did, I got a place back at corner back and we won an All-Ireland in '89. It would've been a killer to miss out on that."

Another career highlight was the Compromise Rules which, after a decade and a half of unofficial contests between county sides and Australian representative outfits, was inaugurated as an official tournament in 1984. Kerrigan was part of the squad which lost a three-test series in '84 and two years later he toured with Kevin Heffernan's side, with Ireland recovering from an opening defeat in Perth to claim the series with wins in Adelaide and Melbourne.

"It was a complete novelty at the time but it was great to be part of it," he says. "You were playing with guys, a lot of them you'd never even have played against, you were only used to seeing them on television. It was a real honour. Fantastic. We spent a month in Australia and it was probably the best experience of my time in football. We felt like professionals - training at 10 in the morning and then again at 6 in the evening to get used to the lights. Kevin Heffernan was a real professional. No stone was left unturned."

Considering Ireland was in the grip of a recession at the time, was it hard to get the time off work? "I was going anyway," he laughs, "whether I got time off or not!"
Talk of Heffernan brings us to another legend of the management game, Kerrigan's fellow Nemo clubman Billy Morgan, with whom Jimmy has shared a sideline in recent years. "Billy is just an incredible man," says Jimmy. "He's never not doing anything. I was involved with him in training the Nemo intermediates last year, and he's unreal. There's no doubt he's still capable of getting the best out of an inter-county side but the thing with Billy is I doubt he'd bring himself to coach anyone but Cork. I don't know, but I'm not sure I could see him taking on Limerick or somebody. To be honest, if they offered him the Cork job again in the morning I'd say he'd jump at it."

***

Jimmy Kerrigan is an estimator and surveyor of Kiernan Electrical in Cork. One of the biggest electrical and instrumentation firms in Cork, Kiernan Electrical was taken over by renowned Limerick business H&F Electrical in 2006. The employers of more than 70 staff between Cork and Limerick, It carries out electrical and instrumentation work with world-famous pharmaceuticals such as Pfizer, Cognis, Eli Lily and Janssen. Tweet

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