Cork v Limerick: Barrett keen to end up-and-down Munster campaign on a high

It might seem strange that the player who captained Cork in the match they won to book their Munster final spot would not want to skipper the side for the decider.

Such is the lot of a vice-captain, with that duty falling to Shane Barrett in the Cork team, assisting Robert Downey, who missed the Waterford game a fortnight ago. The Blarney man, 24 since January, was delighted to accept the role when asked by manager Pat Ryan.

“Pat said to me at the end-of-year review, would I be interested,” he says.

“I asked him who the captain was going to be, but he wouldn’t tell me – I had a bit of an inkling and then I found out it was Rob.

“It is an honour to be asked especially when Rob was going to be captain.

“There’s a small bit [extra] but nothing out of the ordinary. It is a nice honour but as I said hopefully, I won’t have to do it too many more times this year and Rob will be back.

“When I get the chance to do it, you are not really thinking about it at the moment, but afterwards you reflect on it and it is a nice thing.”

If captaining Cork was the high point of the Munster SHC round-robin for Barrett, the lowest moment was the red card in the opener away to Clare.

“Look, I suppose it happened,” he says, “and I was thankful that we got out of Ennis with a point.

“If we had lost up there, we would have been under a lot more pressure and I would have been feeling a lot worse but once we got a point and Tipp and Limerick also drew, no team was worse off – It cost us a point in Ennis and very regretful but we weren’t any worse off than when we got up there.

“Pat had said beforehand that he would have taken a point against the All-Ireland champions.”

Cork bounced back to beat Tipperary in their next outing, though Barrett was cast in the unusual role of spectator, not something he wishes to revisit any time soon.

“It was my own doing, so I couldn’t really give out to anyone else,” he says.

“I probably hadn’t watched a game like that in ages, so it was an experience I hadn’t got since I was about 18.

“I didn’t think of it much before the game but, at the game, it was horrible. Thankfully, the lads were brilliant on the day and put the game to bed in the first half, so I enjoyed the second half.”

Ideally, there will be more games to enjoy this summer on the pitch. It is thankfully different from 2023, when Cork’s early exit meant a raft of departures to America.

Barrett was among those making the transatlantic journey and, while he’s not keen to do it again too soon, it did bring about one change that he was happy with.

Up to then, the attacker had worn a white helmet but now, like Cork colleagues Niall O’Leary and Declan Dalton, he dons a yellow hat, with the US trip the reason for that.

“I went to American for the summer,” he says, “there was six of us there for seven or eight weeks – myself, Seán Twomey, Paudie Power, Ciarán Joyce, Ger Millerick and Niall O’Leary.

“We had our helmets sent over but I posted an old one that I had at home because I didn’t want to damage the white one.

“A fella over there – John Moylan is his name, he’ll love this now! – had a lovely yellow helmet and I started wearing that over there.

“I asked him, ‘Can I take that home with me?’ and he said, ‘Yeah’. I brought it home and I haven’t looked at the white one since!”