McCartan lauds Cork ‘cuteness’

IT’S difficult not to associate a losing manager describing the other team’s expertise in the dark arts as “probably unfortunate” with sour grapes.

But James McCartan’s remarks about Cork’s cuteness were complimentary in the sense he wished his Down team were as good as them in stopping the opposition.

McCartan said: “They scored 2-20 and probably squandered a bit more of the possession they had. They are a strong team. They’d be more professional or clinical in stopping the opposition forwards from playing. I realise that is part of the game and probably an unfortunate part of the game but they are better at it than us.

“Whatever means that it took ...... I just wish we were better at it. I don’t wish to point the finger. We just don’t seem to have the same professionalism in that regard. At the same time, I would dearly love to pick some of them Cork men and transplant them into our team.

“I think on our day we can certainly be impressive going forward. Certainly today, we were on the back foot and Cork took full advantage and all credit to them. They’ll certainly be hard to stop.”

McCartan also jumped to the defence of star forward Martin Clarke after he was sent off for picking up a second yellow card 13 minutes from the end.

“I didn’t see what he did. I would probably just be interested to see if a camera was put on Marty for 70 minutes of the game. I have no doubt that Marty was probably guilty in two instances but I’d just like to see what the camera might pick up (in terms of fouls on him).”

McCartan made no bones about the second-half performance costing Down, their five points dwarfed by Cork’s 12. “The second half was obviously a non-event. I’m bitterly disappointed for the players as much as anything because of the effort they have put in over the last 18 months. We got a bit of a lesson towards the end. You guys can write the obituary better than you need me to volunteer for it. They were running through us and we couldn’t get them stopped.

“We didn’t know where to put our hand in the dyke at times. The momentum was with Cork and whenever they had an opportunity to stand on our neck they took it.”