McCarthy says numbers didn’t add up for Cork
CORK manager Ronan McCarthy felt that his team had been unable to make the most of the situation after Kildare were reduced to 14 men during the second half, when the Rebels had drawn level after starting the second half well.
“I think the sending-off, as it can sometimes, upset us more than it upset them,” he said.
“It took us a long time to reorganise when the sending-off happened. From our point of view, we never got ahead. It was similar to last week in that the sending-off upset Fermanagh more than us.
“We never got ahead so we constantly still chasing the game. Look, it allowed them to hit us on the counter and they did that quite well at times.”
In the first half, Cork had seven wides, some of them very scoreable as they trailed by 1-4 to 0-5 at half-time, and it was something that ultimately came back to haunt them.
“I think that is a fair comment,” McCarthy agreed. “We showed great patience last week against Fermanagh where obviously we had to break down a massed defence. Today, with the wind behind us in the first half, we took shots, I’m not saying they were crazy shots, but we could have worked it into better positions and sometimes, we took shots from 40 metres when there was a runner coming off the shoulder and we could have taken closer to goal.
“We took some poor shots, shots where you’d say the player is capable of kicking them, but are they a percentage shot, probably not.”
While the much-maligned Páirc Uí Chaoimh pitch was the source of much criticism, McCarthy didn’t want to cite it as an excuse, given that Kildare had to play on it too.
“Pitch was heavy,” he said, “look, that’s it. The one bit where the pitch really affected us was the penalty. We actually got a great block down on the Kildare player shooting for a point and it ricocheted up into the air, Ronan O’Toole, who was standing under it, lost his footing.
“That is where the pitch affected us. It left players unsure of their footing and their passing. It was the same for both teams.”
Nevertheless, the fact that Cork have tightened up defensively was a positive for McCarthy to take.
“This time last year, we had played two league games and a McGrath Cup final - we had conceded 3-12 to Clare in the McGrath Cup final, 3-16 to Tipperary and 0-9 to Down,” he said.
“We’ve conceded ten scores today, the penalty as I say was unfortunate. There is no question that defensively, we are a lot tighter and a lot more solid, but you would think that with the level of player we have and the calibre of player we have, we’d be getting more out of our forward line.
“You are not going to be scoring 2-18 or anything like that at this time of year, but, certainly, 1-13 or 1-14 should be in our range with the level of player we have up front. We’ll work on it. We have tried to address the issue at the back and the early indications with that are that we are heading in the right direction. But we have a bit more work do on our forward play, no question.”
They did hit the woodwork on more than one occasion, but McCarthy wasn’t clinging to that.
“I think we had 1-4 off the bar or post,” he said, “but you counter that by saying Kildare played much of the second half with 14 men.
“And as it went on, we became more and more disjointed. But look they are a good team, a seasoned side, they have a good and experienced manager. They used their know-how to manage the game out.
“They countered at the right time and got some lovely scores. They had one or two additions from the bench which added to them.
“We never clicked properly up front. I know Michael Hurley had a great day and so on, from a forward’s unit, we lacked a little bit of cohesion, I thought.”