Former Cork minor and U20 manager Denis Ring has insisted that Ben O’Connor possesses “all the credentials” to fill the vacant Cork senior hurling post.

O’Connor is the frontrunner to succeed Pat Ryan as Cork hurling manager, with Ring, who guided Imokilly to Cork county championship honours last season, stating that it is “very hard to argue with Ben’s credentials for the post”.

Ring, who expects the recently departed Pat Ryan to return for a second stint as Cork manager in the future, stressed the huge importance of getting right the ongoing appointment process.

“I feel Ben has all the credentials to fill the job. He’s more than capable,” said Ring, who brought Cork to All-Ireland minor, U20, and U21 finals during his own time on the inter-county sideline.

“He’s been there, done it as a player. He’s done it as a manager at club level with Charleville and Midleton, and with Cork U20s. It will be very interesting how it progresses.” 

A three-person committee, comprising county board chairman Pat Horgan, Cork GAA CEO Kevin O’Donovan, and vice-chairman Noel O’Callaghan, is currently overseeing the selection process, with the preferred candidate expected to be announced in the coming days.

The 2021 All-Ireland minor winning manager and current U20 boss Noel Furlong is viewed as the other leading contender for a post that has arisen as a result of Pat Ryan’s decision not to accept the fresh term offered to him by the executive last week.

“First of all, Pat is a massive loss because he had everything going for him. He had patience, tolerance, empathy for players, a great understanding, good man-manager, and a really nice guy.

“I’ve been around the block a long time and I don’t know anybody with the street cred or the likability factor that he has. I thought Jimmy Barry-Murphy was the only one that had that. Pat has that too. And I do think Pat will be back in a couple of years.

“It is going to be very hard to follow the last year or two in terms of the groundswell of support from the public and the genuine affection people had for Pat. For a new manager coming in, and I expect that it will be Ben, there’s a number of what I would see as recognisable phases that have to be gone through, beginning with the research phase.” 

In the same manner that Ring and Pat broke bread at the Grand Hotel in Fermoy when the latter succeeded the former as Cork U20 manager ahead of the 2020 season, Ring is hopeful the new man in – whoever that might be – will reach out to his predecessor and tap into the wealth of knowledge Ryan houses regarding the players and set-up he is inheriting.

“I would have passed on profiles of every player that was going to be available to Pat for his first U20 campaign. So, the manager here would have to be debriefed by Pat as to how it went, what he thought worked well, what he’d change if he was in there again tomorrow morning, what were the good points, what were the bad points, and so forth. And I know Pat would be very honest in whoever he is sitting down with for that debrief and they’d get a massive amount of information from that,” Ring continued.

“I know managers in the past that never even spoke to each other because they mightn’t have got on. And there’s a massive amount of corporate knowledge there that you just have to find out, regarding how did it work and how did he deal with the Olympic rings, as I call them, the clubs at one level, players at another level, media at another level, the board at another level, and managing family and supporters outside of that, and to get advice on all that.” 

In the formation of the new manager’s backroom team, Ring emphasised the need for critical voices, rather than “fellas who just want to be there for the sake of being there”. 

The other key backroom decision the new man will have to make is in the area of strength and conditioning, and whether to retain the status quo as headed up by Ian Jones for the past two seasons.

“Then the new manager is going to be meeting all his players one-by-one to get their views and do a SWOT analysis of their strengths, weaknesses, and see what their own reflection is. Are they able to identify their own weaknesses? And from those face-to-face meetings, he will learn an awful lot because while the new manager will know some of them, he won’t necessarily know all of them.

“This is a relatively young panel, there are only a few guys who are aging, so I don’t expect there will be massive change.”