O’Grady warns of hard days still ahead
He recognised yesterday that the county needed the win because of the circumstances of the defeat by Galway in the qualifier competition last year.
Being there in Thurles that evening as an observer, he knew what it felt like.
His message yesterday was that the public should not be under any illusions about the extent to which the outcome had been influenced by Clare misses and the loss of Sean McMahon; and to be tuned into the realities of facing up to Waterford.
O'Grady, who played in the last final against the Decies in 1983, was dealing with other realities yesterday, the fact his Gaelcholáiste Mhuire AG pupils the North Monastery's Irish-speaking unit which he heads were sitting their Leaving Cert, as well as his daughter.
Either way, he has his feet firmly on the ground. As an All-Ireland medal-winner with experience of the bad times, too, and a former selector, he has been around the scene long enough not to get carried away.
Pride didn't come into it for him, he says, while acknowledging it was a strong motivating factor for the players.
"It just gave me satisfaction that we had gone another step," O'Grady said.
"I said at the start of the year that our ambition was just to make progress from match to match. I'd be under no illusions as regards our victory.
"I think Cork needed it as a county, possibly we needed it more than Clare. From that point of view it was very satisfying. Obviously pride in the players themselves and in their own performances needed to be restored.
"Clare went out minus two of their half-back line. If we had to do that we would have been in dire straits. Add to that, Clare missed five or six handy enough chances that, if Sean McMahon was there, he would have put them over the bar.
"They missed his leadership and had to re-jig their midfield which was no help to them."
While underlining the importance of McMahon's absence, apart from David Hoey, O'Grady says he couldn't be sure Cork would deliver the performance they did.
"To be honest I wasn't. You hope the whole time and you prepare the team as best you can, but you feel that you have never done enough.
"It was easy to motivate them for this match. It will probably be a lot harder for the final. "Clare's performance against Tipp was probably no help to them because it's very, very hard to put two matches like that back-to-back.
"Waterford suffered from that last year. Again, we saw a fantastic match between Limerick and Waterford but the replay slumped at the weekend. That happens. It's very hard for amateur players to go to the well each day.
"The (Cork) players adopted a very good attitude towards the match. Even if we had been beaten I would have been very proud of them because of the manner in which they went about things.
"If you coldly look at that game, we were on top, then they came back after half-time. They gave us a fairly severe lesson in the first 10 minutes of the second half.
"Not alone could they have scored but they should have scored a goal. We would have had our backs to the wall if they had got the few points they'd missed earlier and if they had got a goal it could have been a very different story.
"Sometimes, when you win a match you need to, in all the euphoria you can forget the cold realities.
"We struggled for 15 minutes in the second half, until such time as we settled down again, our midfielders and half-backs got back into it and re-dominated.
"Our forwards did the rest from there. There are definite lessons to be learned and if Clare had their full side out there, there wouldn't have been that much between us."
Apart from his vital first-half goal, O'Grady felt Joe Deane's leadership had been outstanding. And he accepted the selectors needed to make defensive switches early in the second half, when they tried several combinations in the full-back line.
"We really were under severe pressure. The introduction of Daithi O'Connell and Barry Murphy caused us severe problems.
"As well as that their half-forward line and midfield came into it for that spell. But we weathered the storm. You are not going to dominate for 70 minutes. You are always going to be under the cosh for 15-20 minutes."
Cork have no secret formula, says O'Grady, but they do have a happy camp, comprising his selectors whom he picked himself.
Trainer Sean McGrath, assistant Gerry Wallis, team doctor Con Murphy and County Board liaison officer Mick Dolan. "We work well as a team. There is a good atmosphere and has been from the start of the year."
He added: "Waterford were superb against Limerick in the first match. Most neutrals would have said they probably deserved to win.
"I saw just snatches of the game on television; to me they had a hold on the game. They were well over Limerick. They are Munster champions and they beat Cork last year.
"To me it's a 50-50 game. Pound for pound last year Waterford were a better team than Cork and they won in a tight game.
"Traditionally Cork came out on top against Waterford in tight games by a point or two, but they didn't do it last year because Waterford are a good hurling side. They always had great hurlers. They have great leadership and a good back-up team."
More immediately, the Cork management now have to cope with their players involvement in club games over the next two weeks.
"We'll have 12 or 13 days clear but in training terms that is maybe six sessions. We're not professional. We can't train every day!"
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