Is the lure of Cork football as strong as it was for players? 

The list does not concern itself with retirements. The list concerns itself with players who’ve opted out long before their time was up.

Some of those defections, as will be spelled out in greater detail further down, were players moving from the football into the Cork hurling set-up. That’s a one-way street. Traffic rarely runs in the other direction. When it does, in the recent example of Conor Cahalane, it was because the middle Cahalane brother failed to secure a spot in Pat Ryan’s league panel.

Just last week Cork GAA chief executive Kevin O’Donovan floated the idea of decoupling Cork football from Cork hurling. Without advocating for it, he floated the idea of following Dublin’s lead and asking young players to decide at 15 whether they want to be Cork hurlers or footballers. Such singular focus so early would at least bring an end to the trend of developing underage dual players all the way up to U20 only for them to then pick hurling when push comes to shove in the graduation to senior level.

“It's what Dublin are doing in hurling. Cork football is suffering in comparison to Cork hurling,” O’Donovan remarked.

The switching of codes is one drain on Cork football, but does not sit alone.

In his first media engagement as new Cork football manager in January of 2022, Keith Ricken confirmed that Michael Hurley and the White brothers from Clonakilty, Mark and Seán, had left the Cork panel of their own accord.

Mark was Cork’s first-choice goalkeeper in 2018 and ‘19. His elder brother was a first-choice starter for a lot longer than two seasons. Hurley, meanwhile, was used off the bench during the two championship campaigns before he pulled the plug.

Current full-back Daniel O’Mahony was another not involved in 2022 because of work commitments but has since returned. Fellow defenders Billy Hennessy and John Cooper made their Cork debuts in the first few weeks of Ricken’s reign. Hennessy chose not to see out the season, Cooper chose not to return in 2023, instead emigrating to America. The latter started all four championship games during the ‘22 summer against Kerry, Louth, Limerick, and Dublin.

Another 2022 debutant Brian Hayes featured in three of those four games. But for injury, the county’s Munster U20 winning captain from the year previous would have enjoyed similar involvement to Cooper. The lure of Cork hurling and an approach by Pat Ryan during the subsequent off-season saw Hayes begin 2023 as a Cork senior hurler, not footballer.

Dano Dineen saw game-time in 2022. Thereafter, he concentrated on club duty in an attempt to get right an injury. Fellow forward Blake Murphy walked early last year. Half-back Cian Kiely emigrated in advance of the same 2024 campaign.

And then we come to the most recent off-season. Who left has been well-documented. No harm, mind, to offer a quick refresher.

Kevin Flahive emigrated. Steven Sherlock opted out, so too did Damien Gore and Fionn Herlihy. Jack Cahalane, as his Barrs clubmate Brian Hayes did two years earlier, changed Cork dressing-rooms.

That’s a lot of names there. There may even have been one or two we missed. Of those we didn’t, how many of Mark White, Seán White, Kevin Flahive, John Cooper, Brian Hayes, and Steven Sherlock would be part of John Cleary’s team for this Saturday’s Munster quarter-final against Limerick if the lure of Cork football had been sufficiently strong to keep them on board.

Mícheál Ó Cróinín was the Cork management member present at last week’s Munster Championship launch. And so he was the one to field the question: Do you think the lure of being a Cork footballer is as strong as it was 10, 15 years ago, or even during your own playing days?

“If you see the effort, time, and dedication the current crop put into it, I couldn't agree with that side of an argument. They're madly passionate about it. They're unbelievably hungry for it,” he said.

“In Cork, you have hurling and football. You get divided, maybe you lose some players to one or the other; could that make us a stronger entity? Should Cork football be doing better overall? You could say, yes, but there are challenges everywhere. Every county has their challenges.

“I don't think the lure... I think it's unfair to put that on the players. There's always transition in any county team. There's always players that will come and go. There needs to be players that come and go because you need to bring freshness in.

“The likes of John O'Rourke, he owes nothing to Cork football. He has given 15 years to Cork football, so if he makes a decision to step away or a Killian O'Hanlon with injuries, they owe nothing to Cork football. So it is next man up and that is the way we have always looked at it. The next men, hopefully, are starting to get into it and hopefully will put Cork football back in a stronger place over the coming years.”