Anthony Daly: If I was Kieran Kingston this weekend ...

Anthony Daly: If I was Kieran Kingston this weekend ...

Cork manager Kieran Kingston

If I was Kieran Kingston this week, I know exactly what way I’d be thinking. League semi-final. Home venue. Good weather. All-out. No looking ahead to the championship. No excuses. I’d nearly be ordering a batch of red Nike T-shirts. 

Job to be done. Just do it.

Cork had their ‘down’ day last week against Wexford, when they had some reason to be disinterested and demotivated. The conditions are the exact opposite this evening because Páirc Uí Chaoimh will be rocking with excitement and anticipation.

With the Ed Sheeran concert denying Cork a second home game in the championship against Clare, this is the second-last game Cork will play at home in 2022. With the Cork supporters not having had a gala hurling game in the Park since June 2019, the Rebel hordes will demand and expect a performance now.

Kieran couldn’t have written away for a better opponent either because Kilkenny will come with all guns blazing. Kieran just has to plan this out in his head and then pitch it to the players with how I’m sure Gary Keegan has advised him to.

That plan should be to win this evening, go on and bag the league final and not even celebrate it. Have a meal that night of the final, sip a couple of beers together, head home, go for a dip in the ocean in Youghal for a recovery session the following day, book a meal for the players on their own afterwards, let them have a chat and then head home. And then start thinking and planning for Limerick on April 17th. That would be my plan anyway.

It takes real planning because this is a unique year with the championship starting so early and just two weeks after the league final. There are no previous templates for how to deal with this scenario. For anyone.

When I was thinking back this week to our league final win with Dublin in 2011, it was easy for us to go all out for a national title, not just because the Dubs hadn’t won one is so long, but because we weren’t playing championship for six weeks. 

No disrespect to Offaly and Joe Dooley ( and they frightened the life out of us in Croker)at the time but they weren’t like the Limerick juggernaut that Cork will face in three weeks.

On the other hand, Cork and the other three semi-finalists should want to win this league. We know Kilkenny always do but I think taking the foot off the gas at this stage, and trying to spare the tank for April and May, could be a dangerous gamble for Cork, Wexford and Waterford.

The beauty of going flat out this weekend is that if you get beaten, it’s still been far more beneficial than going at it half-baked. You then have three weeks before championship where you’ve found out that bit more about some of the younger or new players that you still might not have been sure about prior to the semi-final.

Can you replicate that stuff in a series of in-house games? Back in our time with Clare under Ger Loughnane, those internal matches were the making of us. But when the time is so short now, it can be difficult to get those matches consistently up to the tempo you want or need them to be.

People often said to me in the past, ‘God, Loughnane must have driven ye mad the week before a big game’. It was two weeks out when Loughnane really upped the tempo and demands in those games. That was his gift to us. Cody has always had that grasp of knowing when to dial up the savagery. I’m sure Liam Cahill has a touch of it as well. And you’d be hoping that Kieran Kingston has discovered it by now too.

Cork will need to dial it up this evening to take down a crowd that could sell shares in this stuff, so there is no value for Cork in pulling back and not completely investing in the contest.

I fancy Cork, especially at home. I have been very impressed with Kilkenny in their last two games. Their new players have been excellent – David Blanchfield, Cian Kenny, Mikey Butler. You’d also love the way Walter and Padraig Walsh are operating, as well as the way Billy Ryan is performing.

Cody will be licking his lips at the prospect of this test because he knows his team will be stretched by the pace, class and running power of Cork on this sod. Kilkenny will want to make it into a battle and a war but that is not easy to do in the Park. It’s a hard game to call with Kilkenny’s current form but I think Cork’s need is greater, so I expect them to nick it.

Tomorrow should be another top-drawer contest in the perfect atmosphere because I’d expect Nowlan Park to be rocking. 

Both teams are in good form. If anything, we haven’t given Wexford enough credit with the way they’ve played, especially when they’re the only team in the top two divisions to win every game. They also have the current Player-of-the-League in Rory O’Connor.

Waterford started well in Nowlan Park last weekend, but they just petered out of the contest once it got away from them in the third quarter. That was understandable when Waterford were already effectively qualified. Although some of Waterford’s main men still haven’t played yet, Cahill did rest a handful of their other main men, including Stephen Bennett, who has been giving Rory a run for his money as the marquee player to date this spring.

Cahill has his eyes on the bigger prize down the line and, while Darragh Egan may have too, landing a league title and getting Wexford into the top three in Leinster would rubberstamp an impressive first year in the job.

Darragh has blooded plenty of young lads but the Wexford public seem very happy too with how he has evolved and developed their style of play. It seems to be a hybrid of a new brand and Davy Fitzgerald’s style but I’m sure the forwards in particular are happy with how the evolution has taken place.

Wexford will take beating but it’s time now for Waterford to make a real statement in 2022. After such an underwhelming performance last weekend, Cahill has plenty of ammunition to fire at the players, starting with Dessie Hutchinson, who got his fill of it off Mikey Butler. You can imagine what Liam was saying to his star forward this week. ‘Hi, Dessie, the club stuff is over now, your A game will burn lads there, but you’ve got to bring you’re A+ game to this level.’ I expect to see a riled up Dessie and a more energetic Waterford, who I fancy to shade another intriguing contest by a couple of points.

Finally, the first game of the weekend is arguably the biggest – this afternoon’s relegation final between Antrim and Offaly. The easy case to make is that Antrim are far more deserving of staying up, having performed so well and getting so close to Dublin, Kilkenny and Waterford. Offaly, on the otherhand, have shipped 17 goals and taken some right hidings.

It’s still a hard game to call because the whipping Antrim took from Tipp last Sunday hinted at how much psychological damage the defeat to Laois did. In the same way that Laois had targeted that Antrim game all year, you can be sure that Michael Fennelly and his side have had this game – whoever the opposition was going to be – in his sights too since the outset of the year. Still, I give a hesitant call to Antrim. Three weeks out from championship, you can already feel the buzz building. Still, there are big jobs to be done this weekend. 

Get the T-shirts out. Just do it.

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