Stadium delays might suit under-cooked Cork

WHAT happened next was scarcely believable. At home, with the breeze at their backs, the Rebels had started like a house on fire. Colm O’Neill was denied a goal inside the opening two minutes. Shortly after that Luke Connolly fired over a wonderful point to get the ball rolling for the beleaguered hosts.

If you’d told us then after three minutes of play – or if we’d tried to tell you – that Cork would fail to score again for the rest of the half we wouldn’t have believed you. For as low as Cork’s stock had fallen this was something entirely new.

This was a level of ineptitude we thought beyond the Rebels. For sure they weren’t set up to take advantage of the situation as it presented itself, but that’s not the reason they were four points to one down at half-time.

No the reason Cork were four points to one down at half-time was because of their near complete failure to execute the basics. Their shot-selection and their shooting were not at the standard required for senior inter-county football. They looked a team completely and utterly shorn of confidence.

Tipp weren’t much better mind you, but you still got a sense they knew what they were about. Added to that Liam Kearns had at his disposal Conor Sweeney and Michael Quinlivan, inside line snipers of genuine ability.

The Premier really ought to have been further ahead at half-time and soon had reason to regret it. The injury to Quinlivan – which thankfully was not as bad as first feared – cost them of course, even so Cork’s second half revival caught Tipp cold.

Whatever went on in the Cork dressing room at half-time – and whether it was driven by the players or the management team – it had the desired effect. Some combination of pride and desperation or fear of failure drove them on.

No way could Cork go out of the Munster championship with a whimper like they threatened to in the first half. Cleverly they targeted the Premier’s kick-outs and won the lion’s share of those in the second half, providing a platform from which to strike back.

It was, nevertheless, a gradual thing. Tipperary lofted the opening two scores of the half and to a lot of observers it would have felt as if that was that. It’s speaks well of Cork’s supposedly fragile confidence that they didn’t fold there and then. There’s still a lot of fight in the blood and bandages.

With Donncha O’Connor at the vanguard, the Rebels reeled off the next five points in succession. Here Cork was answering that famous Ciaran Fitzgerald question, they know exactly where their pride is.

In the second half Peadar Healy’s men were undoubtedly the better team, but even then this was no slam-dunk. Cork got their noses ahead, no more than that. With the time approaching full, they held just a single point advantage. About as precarious as you can get.

Conor Sweeney proved as much when he flicked a somewhat hopeful ball past Ken O’Halloran in the Cork net. Cork’s reaction will give them hope ahead of a Munster final with Kerry.

They carried and struck back straight away with a much more impressive goal by Luke Connolly. It was a goal of righteous indignation. Cork had done enough to win this game against the odds and nobody, not even Conor Sweeney, was going to deny them that. It’s hard enough being a Cork footballer at the moment.

For that panel of players the value of Saturday’s win cannot be underestimated. Looking in from the outside it might be easy to pooh pooh it, to look at that first half and declare the Rebels dead men walking in a Munster final with Kerry even at this stage, but that might be a costly mistake.

Against all odds the game in Pairc Uí Rinn showed that, for all their problems, Cork have pride in themselves and faith in each other. That could carry them a lot of the way towards being what they need to be against Kerry.

We’re not saying they’re going to beat Kerry, who remain prohibitive favourites, but we’d counsel against any notion that Cork are going to be little more than canon fodder. In fact it’s probably a blessing in disguise for them that the game won’t now in fact be taking place in the new Pairc Uí Chaoimh.

That might have raised the level of expectation about the team to an unsustainably high level. People would assume that because it’s in the new stadium they’d raise their game and do so, perhaps, to a level that might actually challenge the Kingdom.

With the game in Fitzgerald Stadium – a place Cork haven’t won in since 1995 – they’ll go in very much below the radar. Nobody will expect anything of them and given the state they’re in – for all the encouraging signs from the second half last weekend – that might be no bad thing indeed.