{"id":527429,"date":"2026-07-01T10:38:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T10:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/527429\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T10:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T10:38:10","slug":"darragh-fitzgibbon-we-have-broken-cork-fans-hearts-a-few-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/527429\/","title":{"rendered":"Darragh Fitzgibbon: ‘We have broken Cork fans’ hearts a few times’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Home is home but on Saturday a large slice of Cork<\/a> will transplant itself into Croke Park.<\/p>\n

As Shane Barrett declared in May, the senior hurlers are \u201cthe best-followed team in the country of any sport\u201d and that source of strength isn\u2019t lost on the group.<\/p>\n

The decision by the county board and previous management not to arrange a homecoming after last year\u2019s All-Ireland final defeat raised eyebrows, but the appreciation for fans is abundantly clear in the amount of time players and management spent with them after games.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere seems to be a special bond between the players and the fans at the moment,\u201d says captain Darragh Fitzgibbon. \u201cIt does not matter where the game is played, the stadium is going to be full of 50,000 Cork fans.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does not matter who we\u2019re playing. That was highlighted (v Offaly). There might have been plenty of excuses for some people not travelling, saying \u2018We might leave this one and if they get to Croke Park then we will go then.\u2019 Because it is expensive, to be fair.<\/p>\n

\"Sport<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe do appreciate the time and the money they are spending. They have been on the journey. We have broken their hearts a few times but we have also had some great days. And we hope to give them some more great days over the next couple of weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw a thing as well where the Cork-Offaly match was the biggest supported fixture in Irish sport that weekend (40,185), ahead of the URC final (39,184), so that just tells you how incredible our fans are.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Hopefully, we can keep giving them that reason to support us because it is special for us to be able to walk out and see that sea of red on the terraces.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fitzgibbon obviously empathises with their yearning. On Saturday, he hopes to qualify for a fourth All-Ireland final. He\u2019s 29. You don\u2019t need to tell him but he embraces it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt sharpens the hunger more than anything. We are all getting older so we realise as we do so how fewer opportunities we will get. I don\u2019t think there is either a burden or a pressure on us. We see it as a great opportunity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Saturday we will get to play in Croke Park in a full stadium. There is no con to that, no pressure. It is where we want to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Damien Cahalane turns 34 next month but the convincing manner in which he has taken over from injured Ciar\u00e1n Joyce at full-back has inspired his team-mates.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the playing group, we appreciate him more than anybody. He\u2019s an incredible athlete. The one thing I\u2019ve always admired about him, even since I came in, is his mental preparation and his mental resilience. It doesn\u2019t matter what anybody is saying about him or how a game may be going for him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Cork'sCork’s Darragh Fitzgibbon takes a selfie with supporters. Pic: Tom Maher\/Inpho<\/p>\n

“It might be going good or it might be going bad, but he\u2019ll always back himself and he always has a few things that he knows work for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be mentally tuned in on Saturday, Cork are turning to a Galway native in Gerry Hussey, their performance coach since the start of the season. Hussey assisted Tipperary when they won the Liam MacCarthy Cup in 2016.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s kind of brought a lot of us outside our comfort zone, which has probably stood to us and made us a lot more comfortable,\u201d remarks Eir ambassador Fitzgibbon. \u201cEven when you\u2019re playing and things might go wrong or things might go bad, you\u2019re kind of used to maybe that bit of chaos that can be around the place and how you respond to it.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s got another guy, Eric Baxter, he\u2019s a Cork man who works with him as well, so any time Gerry\u2019s not there, Eric is consistently there. So that just brings that bit of consistency into our training the whole time. Eric\u2019s role is just to basically be one of us, but I suppose he\u2019s that buffer between the players and Gerry.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the biggest thing that Gerry has brought is all his experience with all the other teams that he\u2019s been involved with before. He knows that things don\u2019t always go right and he\u2019s kind of brought that to us, that we control our response to everything on how things go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Rob Downey earlier this week, Fitzgibbon references Cork\u2019s disappointing championship record against Galway these last 17 years. The All-Ireland quarter-final defeat to them in Thurles four years ago is one that stayed with the Charleville man.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of players probably felt like we let Kieran Kingston down as well, because we just didn\u2019t perform at all. We were probably lucky, I think we only lost by a point or two in the end, but Galway were probably much better than us that day.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think Cork have beaten Galway in a championship since 2008 as well, it\u2019s been a long time so Galway have the tradition on their side and momentum on their side over the last couple of games that we\u2019ve met.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inside Cork\u2019s tent, Galway are commanding the players\u2019 full respect.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can see how good they were against Dublin as well in the Leinster final,\u201d says Fitzgibbon. \u201cThey play a little bit of a different brand of hurling as well. That\u2019s going to be a challenge, to figure it out in our training and bring it into the game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Home is home but on Saturday a large slice of Cork will transplant itself into Croke Park. As…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2110,30883,53093,1964,61,60,112],"class_list":["post-527429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-cork-sport","tag-galway-gaa","tag-sport-top-picks","tag-cork-gaa","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}