Limerick won’t catch us off guard, warns Ryan

CORK hurling selector Gerry Ryan says complacency is not an issue ahead of Sunday’s Munster SHC semi-final against Limerick.

“No matter who we’d be playing on Sunday we’d be treating them seriously, and that’s how we’re approaching this game. I said before the Tipperary match that we were taking it one game at a time, and that still holds. We’ll be going out with all guns blazing again on Sunday and we’ll assess things again after the game.”

Ryan said the presence of experienced players on the Cork panel was a huge help to management.

“It’s always a help to management to have a core of fellas who have experience, who have been through the mill in good days and bad days. It’s good for us to have those lads and they’ll be a help to us again on Sunday – they’ve played a lot of championship games and hopefully they’ll play a few more.”

He and his management colleagues will be hoping to see more performances like that against Tipperary, with emphasis on the word ‘performance’.

“That was the most satisfying thing about that game, the performance,” said Ryan. “The result probably took care of itself – once the team performed, the result just happened, it fell into place.

“It’s very satisfying for any management team to have all the players playing well on a given day. We were delighted with the lads, they got some criticism after the National League final but they upped their performance after that.

“There’s good character in them and they were well able to bounce back – and we expected that they would perform, even if we mightn’t have expected the exact result we got.”

Ryan dismissed suggestions that Cork took that National League final lightly.

“When the championship draw was made, the Tipp game was always going to be there in the back of our minds, obviously, and we decided early on in the year that we were going to rotate the panel – that we’d try different players and be able to say afterwards that we could look into the subs and say, ‘look lads, any of ye can go in there and play’. We achieved that.

“We went out to win every game, no matter who we were playing or where, and it was the same for the league final. I heard fellas say since, ‘ah ye were fooling us’. Not at all.

“The truth is that some of the guys didn’t perform on the day. There’s no point saying otherwise, and those lads held their hands up afterwards about that. Against Tipp they stood up.

“It happens in every sport – in athletics, in rugby, every sport – where a guy goes out one day and it happens for him, he goes out the next day and it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t happen for enough players, the team will lose.”

Ryan says Cork’s experience against Limerick in the league suggests Sunday will be no pushover, though practically everyone is tipping the Leesiders to make it past Sunday and into a Munster final with Waterford.

“In the league game we had against them we ran out easy enough winners but for a lot of that game they put up a fine challenge and we were only two or three points up at half-time.

“They have nothing to lose on Sunday and they’ll come out flying at us. They’ve probably trained as hard as any other team and they’ll come to Cork on Sunday written off by everyone. If we get caught on the hop we could end up on the wrong side of a result, so we’ll have to be sure we’re right for the game.

“We wouldn’t have even discussed the Munster final. If you go down that road you'd be in for a surprise. You’d be in for a hiding.”