McCarthy back for Cork
The Castlelyons player missed the semi-final victory over Waterford because of a hamstring injury but recently figured in a club championship match against Douglas.
His selection is the only change from the side that stripped Waterford of their provincial crown. McCarthy takes over the left half-forward position from Neil Ronan. The Ballyhea player did not fire on all cylinders when given his opportunity in that match and gave way to Kieran Murphy of Erin’s Own.
McCarthy’s greater experience gave him the edge over both Ronan and Murphy.
Wayne Sherlock, one of the top defenders of the modern era, will start the final on the bench even though reports suggest he has won his way back to full fitness.
Sherlock hasn’t hurled competitively for Cork since last September’s All-Ireland final due to a serious groin strain and in the interim has only played a handful of games with his club, Blackrock.
Sherlock looked sharp in a recent challenge game against Galway, but with Brian Murphy continuing to grow in stature, and Pat Mulcahy hurling superbly, ending up with the ‘man of the match’ award in the Waterford game, the selectors decided to hold the Blackrock ace in reserve.
Meanwhile, Cork coach John Allen has admitted that the increased demands of his role this year wouldn’t have been possible if he was in a different profession.
“I couldn’t say enough about the people around me,” he said. “The biggest difference this year is that I’m out on the field with the players, organising the hurling and the drills. You are putting in time to keep it varied, keeping the players interested and at the same time getting the value we need out of training. There is so much time goes into it - if I wasn’t a teacher I would find it difficult to do it properly.”
With Cork and Kilkenny favoured to win their respective finals, the Cork coach accepts the prediction that the other three Munster teams (Waterford, Clare and Limerick) will qualify for the All-Ireland quarter-finals along with Galway.
He has an open mind about the merits of the new system, but is happy his team is going through ‘the direct route.’
He accepts the Hurling Development Committee faced an impossible task in coming up with a solution which pleased everyone.
One thing he is happy about, though, is that the provincial winners no longer have to wait five or six weeks for an All-Ireland semi-final game, as pertained up to last year.
“I know the hurling committee are doing their best to come up with a formula that will help hurling and not militate against teams being disadvantaged,” he says. “But, there’s no perfect system when the amount of teams that can reasonably expect to win the All-Ireland is so small.
“You’re trying to do your best to keep all of them involved as long as possible not have hugely one-sided games which, unfortunately, we had with Kilkenny and Offaly.
“The Munster teams are probably better than the teams from the other provinces at this stage. Add Galway to that and you probably have your four quarter-finalists.”
For the time being, Allen doesn’t see the status of the Munster final being undermined. Though in real terms, there’s very little to be gained from winning, other than deciding their pairing for the quarter-final, from a prestige point of view there is still a lot at stake.
“We certainly didn’t like losing last year - even though, as it turned out we had a run of matches which certainly suited us. We want to win. We’re not entertaining not winning”, he stated.
Equally, he recognises that Tipperary have strong rounds for optimism after coming through a much more demanding qualification process.
“The value of a championship outing is that you learn a lot about your team. In Tipperary’s case they have gone from ‘putting out what they thought was their best team the first day to what they are fairly sure is their best team on current form.
He admitted that he wouldn’t mind having Eoin Kelly in his side, but Tipp have “a lot of other agile forwards” Overall, they have a unity about them which he admires.
“People have always acknowledged the special attraction of Cork/Tipperary finals, but that situation has changed in recent times in that other teams have come to the fore. But, judging from the amount of talk about ‘traditional Munster finals, it’s clear that the appeal seems to be still there.”
Allen also made it clear that he will be looking for an improved performance from his team, pointing out that after a ‘dream start’ against Waterford, they let the Decies back into the semi final.
And, he wasn’t happy with the amount of ‘over-elaboration’ coming out of defence.
“That is something we worked on in training,” he said.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
