JBM pleased with progress as Cork young guns deliver

New-time arrived in sun-splashed Páirc Uí Chaoimh yesterday, the clocks all gone forward an hour, but it felt almost like old times as a young Cork side managed by Jimmy Barry-Murphy and hurling with skill, pace and intelligence, raised the spirits of a near 8,000 crowd with a hard-earned but well-deserved win over the old enemy, Kilkenny.

Afterwards the fans rose to acclaim their new heroes, and rightly so. This wasn’t Kilkenny at their All-Ireland best, this wasn’t even Kilkenny with their All-Ireland team, but it was the All-Ireland champions in town nevertheless, and unbeaten so far this year in league or tournament.

For this Cork team then, still very much a work-in-progress, to chisel out a win over hurling’s most doughty opposition — well, it brought back smiles that had been long lost. Certainly Jimmy himself was a happy man. “We’re very pleased,” he said. “We lost a game last Sunday (against Galway) we felt we might get something out of, and against Dublin we won a game we might have lost, so it’s a very tough league.