Counihan sweating on availability of O’Connor and O’Neill

CONOR COUNIHAN has a number of injury concerns ahead of Cork’s Munster SFC semi-final against Kerry on June 7 in the wake of yesterday’s facile win over Waterford.

Alan O’Connor and Anthony Lynch were forced off and substitute Colm O’Neill was also withdrawn late on with a knock.

Though Lynch looks certain to be fit to face the Kingdom, the others will be assessed during the week, which means Counihan and his management team face an anxious couple of days.

“Any of the lads who went off in the game you’d be worried about,” said the Cork manager after the game.

“Two weeks is a very short space of time in which to get fellas recovered, you’d be worried that you wouldn’t get them right. We’ll have to wait and see how bad those injuries are but the time is very short, so we’ll be keeping our fingers crossed on those.

“As for the game, I don’t think we learned a whole lot from today. As far as I’m aware Waterford had their own difficulties in terms of getting training going and getting people together. At this level you need everything to go right for you, and we got a few handy scores early on which helped us to drive on.’’

Waterford boss John Kiely revealed they had opted to try something different tactically but had to overcome limited attacking options.

“If you play a two-man full-forward line you’d need a big man like Gary Hurney and a speed merchant like Liam O Lionnain to play off him,” said Kiely. “But our attacking options were limited. We’ve been trying to put a defensive system in place, and that means hard work, but we also had some positives in the game. We’ve been trying to restore pride in our lads, and looking at the skill levels of our lads, I noticed some of the Cork lads weren’t as good as some of our players when it came to soloing the ball.”

As for the specifics of the game, Kiely had no doubts as to the turning point. “The two goals are the big disappointment. The first was as an own goal and the boys thought the ball was going wide for the second. We don’t like giving away goals at any time.

“A lot of people might have thought Cork would bang in six or seven, but we did well too. They have good forwards, marquee forwards, and when you give them room they’ll punish you.”