Pat Ryan: 'When you take on the job, you have to win All-Irelands. You don't shy away from that'

WHEN PAT RYAN first filled the Cork managerial hotseat at U20 level, he sought to end conversations swirling around the county’s hurling teams about lack of success.

Silverware droughts were issues he sought to tackle.

Their victory, in the delayed 2020 final, over Dublin in the summer of 2021 ended a 21-year wait for that crown and he backed it up with a second successive title a few weeks later.

They ended their 27-year absence from the league winners’ enclosure at senior level in April this season and won a first Munster title since 2018 when they prevailed in June after an extra-time showdown with Limerick.

And yet nothing has consumed more attention than the two-decade barren spell since the county last lifted the Liam MacCarthy Cup.

Tomorrow against Tipperary is another opportunity and Ryan doesn’t shirk away from the high stakes, having set out his ambition early into his senior tenure.

“I won’t back away from stuff I’ve said before. You’ll be judged by other people but my judgement as a Cork person, as a person who’s played, as a person who’s watched games and been involved in going to matches when we won All-Irelands in the ’90s and the ’80s, that’s what’s expected.

“That’s the expectation when you take on the job, that you’re going to win All-Irelands. If you don’t, I suppose failure, is it the right word? It’s probably a harsh word at times. But it’s true, to be honest. You have to win All-Irelands. It’s as simple as that. You don’t shy away from that.”

Ryan took the reins on a three-year term in July 2022. That period is set to close after this year’s championship but he has always been conscious of the need for him to demonstrate progress.

“I’m an amateur person doing an amateur job. I don’t have any contract. I can walk away at any stage and the county board can move me on at any stage. It’s what my family want to do, my energy, whether the lads want to stay on. I’ve been very consistent and I’ve said to the lads before, ‘If you’re not making things better, get out of the way’ because there are loads of brilliant people in Cork who want to be where I am in my position and deal with the brilliant players that I have. If you’re not making it better, if you’re not improving it, you just can’t hog the job for want of a better word.”

In the quest for improvement, he scrutinised everything in the wake of last year’s All-Ireland final loss.

They may have only been pipped by a point against Clare and extra-time was necessitated, bu Ryan was insistent that a stronger approach was needed in 2025.

“You look at yourself first and see what you’re doing and I think me being more focused on the playing side of it, all the stuff that was happening on the pitch, really focusing on that. Sometimes you can get carried away with the logistics side of it and I have a brilliant fella who looks after all our logistics, Dave Nolan, but you get carried away with making sure that the food is right, the gear is right, and travel is right, and how our pitches are right and all that side of it.

“I met the players one to one and I got plenty of feedback off the players. Sometimes you try to be as honest as you can with players and then sometimes you’re probably trying not to hurt feelings. I think a lot of the players who would have came to me and said maybe you just need to be a bit more honest sometimes with us and just tell us what we need to do exactly. It was being a bit more direct and I think that is something that I’ve done this year. It’s something I probably need to get better at all the time. It’s something that’s a work in progress.”

A more player-driven ethos was adopted in the Cork camp with the emphasis on their leadership group.

“The lads that have come into it have been brilliant. We’re much more player-led in what we’re doing, from 2023 to 2024 it was better, to 2025 it’s even better. How we play, how we analyse matches, how we come back at it. We’ve a fantastic analysis and video group led by Tomás Manning. We’ve dialled it down a bit as well. The 20-minute video sessions are gone. It’s 5, 6, 7 minutes regularly, just to get fellas tuned in and that seems to be working as well.”

He doesn’t ignore the past either, tapping into the tradition that Cork hurling teams have built up over the decades.

“The Cork jersey has to mean something to everyone, every time you put it on, and that goes back to the public following us. When the public see that you’re representing the jersey, they’ll still back you. But if you’re insipid in how you wear the jersey or you’re not really playing with physicality or aggression.

“The players I grew up idolising in the 80s, there was no soccer, there was no rugby. The Teddy McCarthys, the Tomás Muls, the Jim Cashmans, the Jimmy Barry Murphys, the Seánie O’Learys, they were gods. It’s like the Kerry team and the Dublin team of the 70s, that’s who the people were, that’s who the heroes were around the place. And there’s an expectation that we wear the jersey as well as they did and do we lean into it? Yeah, you bet your life we do.

“Look, it’s a good thing to come from. I just listened to it there recently about James McCarthy, and he did something with Bernard Dunne. He just said that when he was with Dublin, there’s a way that Dublin should play and there’s a way that Dublin should carry themselves and I just said Jesus that makes total sense. When you watch James McCarthy play, that’s the way he lived it as a footballer.” The Tipperary rivalry is something he has been immersed in during his roles with Cork and their current revival has not surprised him.

“Myself and Liam and Mikey Bevans and Brendan and Wayne would’ve played in an under-20 Munster final against each other back in 1997. Cork and Tipperary, even when you were a young fella going to matches, going to Thurles. It’s a fantastic rivalry. It’s as old a rivalry that’s in the game really. From our side of it, we love beating Tipperary, they love beating us. They’re normally great games.

“They’ve brilliant players. They’ve done an awful lot of work at Tipperary level. They’ve won three Harty titles in the last three years with three different schools. Liam’s got unbelievable expertise, he’s got a great CV behind him.

“Tipperary people, they’ve really got around this team, they’ve got around Liam, they’ve backed him since the start of the league, and they’ve taken off. We’re under no illusions. We’ll be probably favourites going into it, but we were favourites too last year and that didn’t work out. We just need to concentrate on ourselves.”

A central protagonist in the 2025 showpiece, but what is Ryan’s first All-Ireland final memory?

“The first All-Ireland final I went to was in 1986. I was ten years of age. I went up to it with Tadhgie Murphy, the golden boot who got the goal in 1983, and my father. We travelled up and stayed in Jury’s Inn. Teddy, Lord rest him, came back from the Canaries after the semi-final to play in the final. Teddy was a huge figure around our club at the time and very friendly with my dad. So that was a huge thing.”

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