Cadogan baffled by negativity of Cork supporters
This is the team, after all, that drew with Tipperary a couple of months ago in the league and ran eventual champions Dublin – now being talked of so highly – to just a point in the last round of the competition?
Such unjustified negativity has left Cork full-back Eoin Cadogan totally mystified.
“The dog on the street is telling us that we haven’t a hope. Everyone is saying Cork are forgotten about and we haven’t got the players so it’s the perfect situation to be going into the game. I don’t think it’s predictable. No one gave us a chance last year and we came out and everything went right for us on the day. But that’s forgotten about now.”
Forgotten also is the fact that though Cork ended up third from bottom in the league, the four games they lost (Kilkenny, Waterford, Wexford, Dublin) were by just a point. Had those four games gone the other way, had Cork even managed a draw they would have qualified for the league final.
Which suggests this Cork team isn’t so far off the pace as to be dismissed in Semple.
Cadogan concurs: “That’s the positive we took from the league. Ultimately if you looked at the final table we probably didn’t show too convincingly — maybe it’s the ruthless side of things, so we have to be tacking on the points in the final minutes.”
Well, they were ruthless against Tipp last year, and they have that happy memory to draw on. Not so happy however are the memories of what happened subsequently as Cork were forced to sit back and watch Tipperary go on the rampage and claim September silverware.
Not that Cadogan begrudged Tipp their hour of glory. “Absolutely not. We can only control our future and from a Tipperary point of view they showed great steel to push forward and win the All-Ireland going through the backdoor route, grinding out the results that they did against Galway and other games prior to that.”
Still, how do you explain how the fortunes of two teams could diverge so dramatically in the space of a few months?
“We reached such a high standard of intensity in hurling against Tipperary and we were disappointed we never capitalised on it from then on, even in the rest of the Munster Championship. It was an ultimate performance. But it’s not going to be every day you go out that you can give an ultimate performance. Tipperary gave an ultimate hurling performance in the All-Ireland final last year. Are they going to be able to do that in every game in the Championship this year? I wouldn’t expect so. Kilkenny have been doing it over the past few years and that’s a sign of a quality team.”
Lessons were learned then after that game, painful lessons, the primary one being that while you do need to have major focus on every game in the championship, only in the final itself can you afford to have all your focus on just one game.
In all the earlier games there has to be an ultimate goal, a wider focus.
“Yeah, definitely, you need to maintain it (the focus) but we’re going out tomorrow in our first championship game and we’re going out to win it. We’re not thinking of any route bar the main one and hopefully we can bring the same intensity to the table as we did last year.”
One major difference to last year, however is the venue. Thurles has been a favourite of Cork teams for generations, but it is Tipperary’s home stadium and the last time Cork visited in the Munster championship, 2009, doesn’t bring any happy memories for Eoin, despite the fact he was man-of-the-match.
“We still didn’t win and that’s the main thing. Every game is going to be different, the team that we played in 2009 is going to be different from the team we’re going to be playing tomorrow. They are All-Ireland champions and are going to be a huge force again this year. We’re looking forward to it, we’ve prepared well and we’ll see how things go.”
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