Battling qualities delight both managers

Relief was the overriding emotion from both camps following yesterday’s drawn Cork JAFC final.

Tom Doody’s Rockchapel began the decider in stunning fashion, hitting 1-1 inside four minutes.

But the Duhallow side didn’t score for the remainder of the half and trailed at the break to Doody’s dismay. “We had a lot of possession but we couldn’t convert it. Having said that, we weren’t too disappointed coming in at half-time only a point down. We had a bit of momentum at the start of the second-half but we missed a few handy scores, that put us on the back foot a bit.”

Kilmurry scored the game’s last two points to force the replay, and their manager Seán Murphy was pleased with the battling spirit of his men. “I’m relieved, in a sense,” he said.

“I’ll take the draw, we didn’t play well but we battled back from two points down and they missed some easy scores. If they had gone three points ahead, it would have been very hard to pull it back, with the way the game was going. We were making a lot of basic mistakes, which wasn’t a bit like us, but it’d be a lot worse if we were going into a dressing room having lost by one or two points.”