‘Home truths’ told as Rebels seek to get back on track

IT all went very much according to plan for the Cork footballers in Thurles last Saturday, but beating Limerick was nothing to write home about, as was readily acknowledged by Mark Collins afterwards.

The Castlehaven clubman enjoyed a very fruitful outing at wing forward, knocking over five points from play, and, having done much to inspire Cork’s comeback which only just fell short against Tipperary in their previous championship outing, he is entitled to feel satisfied with his form in the campaign so far.

Yet, he admitted the Cork forwards will need to improve on what they produced against Limerick if the team is to continue their recovery from the shock defeat by Tipp in the weeks ahead.

“There’s obviously a lot to work on, particularly up front, because we missed a lot of chances today. I think we had about seven chances of goals, and we only took two of them, which simply isn’t good enough at this level

“It’s something we’re going to have to get right in order to make any further progress, and it could have cost us if we had been up against a better quality of opposition today,” he said.

Collins is satisfied, however, that Cork won’t be as wasteful again, stating he’s in no doubt about the potential of the forwards.

“We have high calibre forwards who can score, so I don’t think we have too much to worry about, and I’d be confident enough we can get our act together for the next game. I suppose the main thing about today was that we sorted ourselves out at the back, and, in contrast to the Tipp game, we managed to keep Limerick’s score right down.

“I thought our defence was very solid, we didn’t allow Limerick to create any goal-scoring opportunities, and if we can keep doing that, we’ll be in with a right chance of getting a few more wins under the belt.”

Collins revealed there was a lot of soul-searching done in the wake of the loss to Tipp, adding that the players felt under a certain amount of pressure going into the do-ordie clash with Limerick.

“We knew we left ourselves down against Tipp, we just didn’t perform on the day, and it’s been a tough four weeks since then, one with our clubs and three with Cork. At the same time, the training was very enjoyable, fellas put their heads down and worked very hard, because we knew we had a lot to prove.

“We had a meeting earlier this week during which there were some home truths told to people, and I’d say that helped to strengthen our resolve coming up here today.

“Having said that, we didn’t exactly play out of our skins, I’d call it a six or seven out of ten performance, but I thought we were comfortable enough all through.

“We didn’t really get out of second or third gear, but today was all about winning, so we’re very pleased we got the job done.”