Counihan: players taken to hell and back

CONOR COUNIHAN admitted last night his Cork players “were taken to hell and back” in Sunday’s nail-biting All-Ireland semi-final at Croke Park.

The coach saluted the Rebels for “grinding” out a one-point victory over Dublin, but used last year’s All-Ireland semi-final against Tyrone as a reference point against any notion the “hard part is now done”.

“We played well against Tyrone, and felt very confident afterwards because we thought we had answered an awful lot of questions. But in hindsight we played too well, and mentally we may have taken our foot off the pedal for the final (against Kerry).”

Counihan understands that his side have not been pleasing on the eye on their seven-game route to a final date with either Down or Kildare but has no apologies to make to the Style Council.

“Sunday’s performance was disappointing,” he conceded, “but it does leave an awful lot of room for manoeuvre in terms of work. You can now go to fellas and show them four or five things to improve on for the final.

“I’d happily take the same again in the final. If we can get through it by a point, that’s all that matters. There’s no-one left out there to produce a show at this stage,” he declared.

Cork lost a first minute goal and their captain Graham Canty at half-time. They struggled to inject any fluency into their game and even after Donncha O’Connor’s penalty reduced the leeway to a point with 15 minutes left, Dublin widened the gap to three within minutes. As gutchecks go, it was full-on.

“We were taken to hell and back on a few different occasions and still ground it out,” said Counihan last night. “Those two (Dublin) points might have taken the steam out of it for us, but we showed a bit of patience when things opened up for us. Their intensity dropped a little, and they became a little indisciplined in the tackling, which was a result of tiredness.”

Though it’s an initial diagnosis, the prospects of Canty making the September 19 final appear to be good, Counihan believes.

“He’s going to be sidelined for a while again but I’d be still confident enough that we will get him back training in two weeks. That’ll give us enough time to be ready for the final.”

What has intrigued observers is Cork’s tendency to finish games strongly and with their form players on the field. Counihan insists it’s not tactical. “The reality is some people are fit to start, and others aren’t. And some contribute an awful lot more when they come in. There are a whole host of variables in that equation, and a lot of it is down to current form. I wouldn’t be reading too much into it,” he insisted.

While Counihan accepted that winning semi-finals is all that matters, he accepts that form is not something one can summon on demand. Whatever gameplan they devised for Dublin was ruptured after 66 seconds by Bernard Brogan.

“Our game plan was to get one of those early goals,” he mused. “We figured that if we kept a bit of width to our game, it would work for us and we did that well occasionally. But there were times when we didn’t stick to the plan and we went down the middle and consequently turned over a lot of ball.

“Dublin were dropping a man back in front of the full forward line so, in fairness to our lads outside trying to get ball into the forwards, they didn’t want to be turning over ball through an interception either. It’s a question of being patient and work the ball through from outside with your extra man.

“Yes that left the full forward line starved at times. But it wasn’t that we didn’t create goalscoring opportunities with the run – Pearse O’Neill and Daniel Goulding’s one when he fisted it to the net, for instance. Plus there were a few more handy points that you’d like to have taken. On the debit side, we weren’t so good on the breaks. That’s a worry, because breaks are almost more important than primary possession now, because there’s so little of that available.”