‘We’re licking our wounds’

GERALD McCarthy wasn’t offering excuses yesterday when he faced the press. Offered the bait of blaming Cork’s three games in 15 days for his side’s defeat, he shook his head.

“No, we played the semi-final against one of the teams of the decade. That’s where we wanted to be, no matter how many games we had to play to get there. We have to admire Kilkenny, they gave a marvellous performance up to the 23rd minute, we seemed to take our foot off the pedal a little bit and you can’t do that against Kilkenny — they rapped out an eight-point lead very quickly.

“Against a team like them, that’ll prove impossible to recover. With this group of (Cork) players you never know when it’s over or not, they fight to the end, and we had a couple of goal chances in that first half, to prosper we needed to get them. They didn’t happen, and you have to admire Kilkenny.