Allen: I have no doubt they’ll be back

LESS than 24 hours after the bitter disappointment of losing the All-Ireland final, Cork manager John Allen is adamant – this team will bounce back.

“There’s a huge winning mentality among that group of players, I have no doubt that they’ll be back eager and ready for training, once the beginning of the year comes. The talent is there, Brian (Corcoran) is the only fella into his 30’s, Pat Mul, all the rest of them should have at least a couple of years (to get to 30), minimum. I can honestly say I didn’t see a second of staleness in our fellas over the whole year. We mightn’t have played particularly well at times, but there was never a staleness or a dullness, never a reluctance to come to training. They did everything that was asked of them. I think there’s a huge desire to win among that group, I have no doubt they’ll be back.”

They’ve done it before, of course, came back from defeat (by Kilkenny, again) in 2003 to win in 2004 and 2005, so the precedent is there, even if the circumstances have changed.

“It’s different, obviously. In 2003 you had this new group losing out on the big day, so you had this band of brothers kind of saying to themselves, we like this but we want to go a step further. It’s different this year, you’ve done it twice, I’m not sure yet where the dynamic is.”

Speaking to a cross-section of Cork supporters afterwards, a common impression was that missing out on the three-in-a-row was the major disappointment, a little opportunity for history lost; not for the first time this year, however, Allen reckoned that among the squad, the three-in-a-row simply wasn’t a factor.

“Yerra no, not really, not for us anyway. We’d love to have won it, we prepared to win it, but three-in-a-row is only a statistic for history.”

Pressed that no, it’s surely bigger than that, he was adamant “I’m not any more disappointed because of the fact that we didn’t manage to complete the three-in-a-row, not at all. The better team on the day wins, the team who plays better, that’s the bottom line, and that was Kilkenny.”

So much better, in fact, that their manager (along with most observers) feared it might end much worse than it actually did, a three-point margin.

“We were under pressure with ten minutes to go, Kilkenny could possibly have won by more. You don’t like to be in a situation against Kilkenny where you’re chasing the game, you’re down six points; what Kilkenny did against Clare, what they’ve often done before, they turn the screw, pull away from you. I was glad that didn’t happen, it looked for a few minutes like it might; we then got a goal, could have stolen the draw, which would have been against the run of play.”

That goal, superbly finished by Ben O’Connor after a determined surge along the endline by Niall McCarthy, threw Cork a lifeline, but even then, five minutes still to play, John felt the writing was on the wall.

“I haven’t seen the match replay yet, but I think at that stage, really, we were fire-fighting, we were chasing. They were more intense, they were hungrier, their backs were better than us. We had already replaced a midfielder and two forwards, that told its own story.”

To get back to this stage again next year, however, Cork will again face a tough challenge. In the last two seasons, they’ve had to win what amounts to two Munster championships, just to reach the All-Ireland final. Getting to their fifth All-Ireland final in a row will be monumental.

“It is difficult to win Munster, and I know from reading the papers during the last week that whatever new plan they have for next year’s championship, the Munster champions won’t be rewarded with an All-Ireland semi-final place. The fact that it is so difficult to come through Munster, the champions should get a stage further. We ended up last year playing the same team twice, it could have happened again this year, and it just makes it so much harder to get to a final. You have more quality games, no doubt about it, and two best teams probably end up in the final, which is a good thing, you’re not having one-sided finals, more evenly-balanced. But winning Munster is tough; Tipp will be good next year, Waterford the same, I’ve no doubt Cork will bounce back from this, Limerick with a bit of organisation – and I’m not telling them what to do. Clare might go through a transition, if the older lads decide to retire, but all of these are good teams.”

Finally, the dreaded question, where does this leave John Allen?

“I do have a decision to make, and I’ll make that decision over the next few weeks. I won’t make it today, I need to reflect, talk to the others, some very important people we have in our backroom team.”