Every piece of sliverware counts says new boss McCarthy after cup win

THE McGrath Cup competition may not have been on the radar for the likes of Kerry or Tipperary this season but Cork’s new manager Ronan McCarthy sees plenty of benefit to the competition and what his team can get out of it.

“Every piece (silverware) counts,” McCarthy stated at full-time last weekend after his side saw off (just) Clare in the McGrath Cup Final.

“We will need to sit down and have a look at the game but we got a good game from a good side that are well managed and that has to be seen as a good thing. We had some errors, lost momentum but ultimately got out of it with a win.

“To be fair to Clare they were superior to us for long periods of the first half and obviously for a good 20 minute period there in the second half and we lacked a foothold in the game, but we got a foothold there in the last five or six minutes when fellas took the shackles off and started chasing the game and luckily we got the result.

“Overall it was very hard to know what to make of the game as a whole. I think we were seven up at half time and that flattered us I thought. They were good up front and moved us around very well. The two goals we got early on were the cushion at the break, probably something we didn’t deserve.

“Second half our levels dropped a bit and they took over and then we made a few substitutions and got some momentum in the game, had three goal opportunities and managed to take one – it was a funny type of a game really.”

Any questions about the importance of the McGrath Cup to Cork going forward were again clearly answered by McCarthy.

“I have said it before and I’ll say it now, as long as I am the manager of this team we will be involved in this competition. I see great benefits from the point of competitive matches and getting match fitness into the legs while also getting to see players in tough games.

“We bring in players for the first time to get experience and while we see them in training there is nothing like seeing them in a proper game. I am a big fan of this competition and I will always be.”

McCarthy may be prepared to extol the virtues of competitions like the McGrath Cup, but he doesn’t believe that it is all or nothing at this point of the season.

“Of course you want to win the game, you want to win every game but if you didn’t win here today would it change what we do next week? no of course.

“The real positive from this is that we may find ourselves in situations during the year where we might be down four or five points in the last three or four minutes and we now know that we can make goal chances.

“We have put an awful lot of players in and got to learn a lot about them and that is the positive from today.”

McCarthy will have learned plenty from his two games in the McGrath Cup this season and the head tactician will be pleased to come away with the trophy but no one will be more acutely aware than the man in the hot seat himself that 2018 is going to produce serious challenges for his team with all involved required to up their game substantially from previous campaigns.