McCarthy: We’ll have to improve

CORK star Niall McCarthy says he and his team-mates will have to improve on their best performance of the championship so far, against Tipperary in their first game, to have any chance in the All-Ireland semi-final against Kilkenny.

McCarthy was speaking in the wake of the Rebels’ All-Ireland quarter-final win over Antrim in Croke Park, when Cork had nine points to spare over the northerners.

“Kilkenny are a class team, there’s no point in saying otherwise about a team that’s won four All-Irelands in a row,” said McCarthy.

“We did well in our first championship game against Tipperary but we’ll have to go above that again if we’re to have any chance against Kilkenny.

“The performances against Limerick, Waterford and Antrim wouldn’t be nearly good enough, but we know that. This is why you play the game in the first place, for big occasions like this, and we’re looking forward to it.

“Obviously we were aiming to go the front-door route, but that didn’t work out. Anything other than a victory would mean an unsuccessful year for us.”

McCarthy said Cork had to regroup after the disappointing extra-time loss to Waterford in the Munster final replay.

“We were fairly down after the loss to Waterford in the replay last Saturday week.

“We only had the week to pick ourselves up so we didn’t have much time to get back on track, but we had a meeting with Denis Walsh last Wednesday and we had a good chat.

“That refocused everybody, and we went on to do some recovery work and a bit of sharpening up to get ourselves ready for Antrim.

“We’d had two tough weekends in the run-up to that and we knew we’d have to be up for it big-time against Antrim.”

McCarthy said he and his team-mates had welcomed the opportunity to line out again in GAA headquarters. “It won’t do us any harm, certainly. It’s 2008 since we played in Croke Park, though it feels a lot longer than that – 2008 feels like five or six years ago for some reason.

“So we were delighted to get the run-out there, especially for the newer lads who wouldn’t be as familiar with the place.”

McCarthy said he and his team-mates had paid no attention to suggestions that they would beat Antrim easily.

“We couldn’t buy into that – we had a lot of injuries to deal with and fellas were very disappointed after the Munster final. We had to get ourselves right first of all and ignore the talk about the game,’’ he said.

“We’d have respect for any team we come up against, and the fact that Antrim had beaten Dublin put us on our guard as well. We had the utmost respect for them and they showed why, the way they played.”

It was McCarthy’s goal that proved the decisive moment, when he batted the ball home cleverly from a tight angle, but the Carrigtwohill man shared the credit to the man who gave the assist.

“It was a great pass from Aisake (O hAilpín),” said McCarthy. “You’d spend a lot of your time making those runs in to support your team-mates, and a lot of the time maybe you’re not spotted.

“You could make 10 runs and you mightn’t get the ball eight or nine times out of 10, but you’ve still got to keep making them.”