Morgan not ruling out another crack at Sam

Brendan Larkin

"Had we won this year's All-Ireland title and I was reasonably confident that we would it was my intention to step down," said Morgan.

"The commitment to the job is massive. It's almost full time. People only see what we do on match days, but there's a huge amount of preparatory work behind the scenes and that takes up an enormous amount of time.

"Also, I'm trying to get my business up and running and I need to devote a lot of time to that. However, the decision about the Cork coaching job is out of my hands.

"My two year term is over and it's now up to the county board to decide who they want for the job. I'll wait and see how things pan out. It's early days yet but I would hope the decision is made reasonably soon to allow the incoming coach and selectors to view the concluding stages of the county championship."

Looking to the future, Morgan remains convinced that the talent is in the county to win a senior All-Ireland. "I said it before and I'll say it again, there is very little between the top half a dozen teams, and I would include Cork in that six.

"After Sunday's defeat, I know there will be knockers out there ready to pounce, but I'd prefer them to look at the positives rather than the negatives.

"Cork has come a long way in 12 months. We've had some excellent results. The county has won two Munster under 21 titles in two years, and I remain convinced that the talent is there to win the Sam Maguire Cup."

Still hurting from Sunday's defeat, Morgan said he was disappointed his game plan didn't work. "I expected there would be a lot of breaking ball around the middle of the field but we were very slow in picking it up.

"Hindsight is a great thing, and looking back now, there were a couple of things I would have changed but that's for another day now.

"We had talked about where Kerry get their primary possession which was not from high fielding but breaking ball and we needed to win our share if we were to have any chance of beating them.

"That didn't happen and it's very easy to feed your forwards quality ball when you get so much possession from loose play. It's a lesson I hope our lads will learn from in the future.

"We also had a plan to try and cut off the supply of ball into Colm Cooper by pulling a forward back in front of him and while that worked early in the game, we failed to maintain that move and were badly punished.

"Provided we take the positives from the overall season rather than the negatives from one game, I would be confident for the future. It won't take too much to turn it around.

"I would accept there is still a lot of work to be done, but equally I remain convinced the talent is in the county to win the All-Ireland title in the near future."