O’Grady preaches caution as De Banks rouses Cork players
“Brilliant,” reckoned talismanic Cork defender Diarmuid O’Sullivan; “this is my sixth championship season, but it’s the first time I’ve ever heard De Banks being sung, it was a fierce boost.”
However, in the sober confines of the after-match tunnel, Cork manager Donal O’Grady was preaching caution:
“We’ve won the semi-final of the Munster championship, that’s all. We’re into a Munster final but we’ve nothing won yet.
“You have to keep it in perspective as well. If we were asked to play a Munster semi-final without two-thirds of our first-choice half-back line, we probably wouldn’t be at the races either.
"And that’s what Clare had to do, play without their captain, a fantastic figure for them over the years. You saw yourselves in the first half, they missed several chances of points from long-range frees, scoreable chances that if McMahon was there he’d have put them over the bar.
"I think we benefited big-time from the absence of Sean McMahon today.”
What of the display of some of those who did play, Cork’s own Wayne Sherlock for instance, surely man-of-the-match?
“I don’t discuss individuals. It’s a team effort, and the defence as a unit played well, as did the forward line. But Clare were on a high after beating Tipp in Cork, and I think that worked against them today.
“We don’t want the same thing to happen to us against Waterford. Was that our peak performance of the year? That’s the problem we’ll have to deal with.”
Another problem they’ll probably have to deal with, especially in light of the other semi-final on Saturday, is being favourites for that Munster final, a theory with which O’Grady radically disagreed:
“I wouldn’t say that will make us automatic favourites. We’ll be playing against the Munster champions, Waterford who hurled very well against Limerick the first day.
" The common view seemed to be that they deserved to win the drawn game, but things went against them. I think they had a bit of a stranglehold on the match last night, could have won by more.
"They are Munster champions, and regardless of our performance, or theirs, I don’t think anyone can make us favourites.”
One of Cork's most impressive was the aforementioned O’Sullivan, playing in the unfamiliar position of corner-back:
“I haven’t played there for five years, but as a full-back line, I thought we played very well, from the goalkeeper out, in fact the seven backs played very well.
“We were confident in our own ability, we knew after what we saw in Clare’s win over Tipp that, if we didn’t meet fire with fire, we were going to get caught, going to get blown out of the water.
"We’d done a lot of talking to each other, but in the end, I think it was our hurling that shone through. That was a game we needed to win for ourselves, the players, and for the people of Cork.
"The last time we were here, last July (one-sided loss to Galway), we left ourselves down with a big bang. It was important to us to come here and get a victory, it’s a serious confidence boost for us.”
Team captain Alan Browne outlined how the groundwork was laid. Simple, back-to-basics stuff:
“That’s been our tactic all through training, once we got the physical training out of the way, Donal (O’Grady) likes to work on the hooking, the blocking, striking on the ground, and that showed out there today.
"Rather than trying to run with the ball all the time, do the basics well, and we did. We were focused from start to finish, and that was the most pleasing thing about the game.
" We knew we were going to have it tough against Clare, we’d seen them against Tipperary, they blew them off the field.
"Tipperary could never get going, yet they didn’t become a bad team overnight. It was just the way Clare hit them hard from the start.
" We had a stormy ten minutes at the start of the second half, but then we started to pull away again.”
Waterford now, and a Munster final, first since 2000.
“It’s a pity we didn’t see the (drawn) game last week because then we’d have seen the real Waterford.
" I saw the game last night, it looked like a poor game to be honest, but we know Waterford will pick up considerably from that performance.”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
