City slickers' return in Cork reminiscent of days of 'Little All-Ireland'

Next weekend's clash of the old world blue bloods of Blackrock and St Finbarr's in the Cork hurling decider offers a chance to ponder an empire which was lost.

Perusing the roll of honour in the All-Ireland club hurling championship points to a strange anomaly - namely, Cork's stranglehold on the competition in its first decade and the almost complete dearth of success thereafter.

It was in Cork where the concept of a national or cross-county competition comprising of the best club teams was first birthed in the 1950s. Or at least, that would be the first such tournament where the competing clubs retained their own names.

The original All-Ireland inter-county championship, back in the fledgling days of the association, was essentially a shrunken form of All-Ireland club championship, albeit with the participating club adopting the name of their county. By 1892, the selected club was free to name players from elsewhere in the county and the direct link to the club championship eventually withered away.

In the 50s, as part of a fundraising drive to build new churches around Cork, Bishop Cornelius Lucey conceived of a tournament involving some illustrious club sides from multiple counties. It was an invitational affair called, not unreasonably, The Cork Churches Tournament.

Liam O'Donoghue of Thurles Sarsfields, then in their pomp and chief contributors to the great Tipperary side of the era, reminisced about the competition with the Irish Examiner's Michael Moynihan some years ago.

We had a very successful run in it — and there were five churches built in Cork on the proceeds

"You had the likes of Glen Rovers, St Finbarr's, St Vincent's of Dublin, Mount Sion of Waterford — great teams, and it was very competitive. There was no