Anthony Daly: Cork's backs are to the wall - will Clare be the firing squad?

So much to savour: The meeting of Clare and Cork is absolutely packed with intrigue. Pic:INPHO/Tommy Dickson

Forgive the hyperbole and inflated description but that’s what the round robin championship does to you. If last week’s Clare-Tipperary game was big, tomorrow’s Clare-Cork match is a monstrosity. The gorilla suddenly becomes King Kong. In the blink of an eye.

Both teams have only played one game out of four but this already looks like a winner-takes-all behemoth. Clare still have two home games but they’re against Limerick and Waterford, which guarantees you nothing.

If Cork come away from Thurles tomorrow with nothing, and then have to go to Walsh Park in their next game in a match Waterford also have to win, they’ll be right up against the 8 ball. With their poor scoring difference from the Limerick game, Cork’s fate could nearly be sealed by tomorrow evening.

It’s hard to believe a game of this magnitude isn’t live on TV but hopefully that will mean an attendance in Thurles to match a fixture of such importance. I’ve heard stories of the Cork crowd being hostile towards the team and management, which may reduce the numbers travelling, but, whatever happens, Cork need to at least deliver a performance to get the rebel hordes back on side.

Clare certainly don’t have issues on that front because the county is absolutely behind Brian Lohan and the team. The manner of last week’s victory against Tipp has strengthened that bond and conviction, but Lohan won’t be getting carried away either. Tipp were really poor and Lohan knows how fickle all this stuff can be, as we’ve seen first-hand in Cork since the league final. A couple of poor defeats and the snipers suddenly appear and start taking aim in every direction.

Lohan and the management will have studied the Limerick-Cork game very closely and observed how Limerick just penned Cork back and never let them get their running game going. That comes down to good defensive structure and a savage desire of your forwards to work back the field, all of which Clare showed six days ago.

Lohan will have also made a firm decision on how to set up on the Cork puckout because Limerick have certainly given them the blueprint over the last nine months; press the Cork puckout high and hard up the field and force Pa Collins to go long, with the Clare half-forwards and midfielders scavenging and savaging on breaks.

Cork did enjoy a lot of success on their long puckouts last year in this fixture but they don’t appear to be operating with the same confidence or fluency now as they were back then.

This match is loaded with intrigue. Cork played Niall O’Leary as a man-marker on Tony Kelly last year – to minimal effect – so what will they do now? TK may not have done much last week but a closer analysis on his contribution showed just how much space he opened up even when he was nowhere near the play.

Kieran Kingston will have studied those patterns very closely and planned accordingly, but he’ll have also noticed that Clare have far more guys capable of punishing Cork now than they had last July, when Tony did all the damage.

Ger Millerick looks best suited to man-mark Tony but the biggest talking point is around where Cork play Mark Coleman. TJ Ryan said on our podcast earlier in the week that he sees no value in spending two years playing Mark at number six and then tearing it all up after two games. My response was that Cork nearly have to rip it up at this stage.

Cork’s hand is further restricted with injuries to Damien Cahalane and Dáire O’Leary. That might mean Séan O’Donoghue taking up station at full-back, or else a return to the position for Robert Downey, which would be a risk after the Glen Rovers man experienced a desperately difficult day there against Limerick last August.

On the other hand, Cork might see Downey as an ideal match-up for the height and physicality of Peter Duggan. Yet if that’s how Cork see it, the ideal counter-punch from Clare is to land Shane O’Donnell in there and for Shane to just take on Downey and go for goals.

The return of Duggan and O’Donnell give Clare a different type of attacking threat they didn’t have last year but they could still do with a few more options, which Clare don’t have with injuries to Aidan McCarthy, Aron Shanagher and Mark Rodgers, all of whom featured in this fixture last year.

On current form, you’d have to fancy Clare but the bookies certainly don’t see it that way. They seem to be basing their judgement on earlier in the season, especially after Cork whipped Clare in their opening game. Limerick are a different animal but the way they have stormed their way through their first two championship matches lends weight to the theory that league form means nothing.

Cork always like playing in Thurles but Clare have all the advantages here, in my opinion, after last Sunday. I always felt that playing another game in the same venue a week later was a huge advantage with familiarity, but it’s even more of a plus now with the attention to detail teams put into their preparation, especially the way everything is timed down to the second. Anything that didn’t work for Clare last week can be just tweaked now.

The biggest alterations Clare need to make in their approach on the field is on their own puckouts. You could understand Clare going long with all their restarts after the break. They were 13 points up. There was no need to take chances on short puckouts, especially if they weren’t on. But chancing just three puckouts out of 19 in one half is a class of a meltdown, whatever way you look at it. As well as being too predictable, it gave Tipp a launch pad to build from. Clare were able to combat that threat with a savage workrate, which is what they’ll have to bring to the table again tomorrow.

It’s hard to know where Cork are at. Nobody ever knows what’s happening within a camp but the soundings aren’t good; that the players aren’t happy with the gameplan or the set-up. That sounds like more of an excuse culture from the players, which they’re certainly capable of.

Cork just need fellas to discover more about themselves, guys like Darragh Fitzgibbon, Shane Kingston and Tim O’Mahony need to deliver a big game if Cork are to get the result.

Cork’s backs are to the wall and they should come out with all guns blazing but I expect Clare to meet that challenge head on. If Clare’s work-rate and intensity is higher than last week, I fancy our forwards to put up a big score on their defence. It’s a hard game to call but I’m confident Clare can win.

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The great pity about tomorrow is that the Clare-Cork game clashes with Galway-Kilkenny. I’d give anything to be sitting behind Brian Cody and Henry Shefflin and just watch the subplot play out. It would be a bigger story if this was an All-Ireland semi-final or final but the narrative is still mouth-watering.

Cody will just treat this as any other game. From knowing Shefflin, who I got to know fairly well when he was with RTÉ, there is a ruthless streak to him too, which I’m sure he learned off the man he’s meeting tomorrow. Everyone knows that Cody doesn’t do sentiment but Henry won’t be doing it either, a trait he’ll also have learned from the master.

They have only played Laois and Westmeath to date but I’ve still liked what I’ve seen from Kilkenny. Adrian Mullen got six points from play against a flat Laois side last week but he looks to have given Kilkenny an added dimension out the field, especially when Mullen wasn’t really firing at wing or corner-forward.

Kilkenny look really settled all over the field, both at the back and especially up front. Walter Walsh, John Donnelly, Billy Ryan and Padraig Walsh have been very consistent while Eoin Cody is capable of anything and TJ Reid is just TJ.

Outside of Limerick, no other team is as settled as Kilkenny. They have all their main men back whereas Galway are still heavily restricted from the loss of Conor Whelan. Galway’s form hasn’t been as reliable but it’s time now for the Galway boys to make a stand, especially for their manager and what he has given to them this year in the face of such imaginable grief over losing his brother. That emotion will fire up Galway in Salthill but I still expect Kilkenny to come away with something, whether that’s a draw or a win.

Finally, in the other two games this weekend, I expect wins for Wexford and Dublin. The Dubs are in a nice position whereas Wexford are desperate for points and some momentum. On Thursday, Larry O’Gorman criticised Darragh Egan’s gameplan, with Larry O saying the players are ‘confused’ by the strategy.

Darragh was the Messiah during the regular league campaign. But one or two dodgy results in this round robin can soon turn you into the fall-guy.

In the blink of an eye.