Rebels not hung up on Donegal

Cork footballer Donncha O’Connor says it’s dangerous to focus “on what Donegal do” this year.

Cork went out to the Ulster side in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final and O’Connor admires their system but feels concentrating on their tactics would not serve his side well.

“Every fella knows what the next fella’s going to do. It’s probably a bit dangerous if you’re concentrating on what Donegal do, but it’s just that they have a system. Whether they’re up or down, they stick to it.

“I think it’s just as simple as that, they stick to it and when push comes to shove, they don’t panic or go away from it. I think that’s what got them through games last year, that they all stuck to the game plan.”

O’Connor didn’t disagree with the perception that Cork came up short tactically in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final.

“It definitely looked that way alright, and don’t get me wrong, Donegal definitely deserved to beat us.

“In the first half I thought we played very well, were probably unlucky to go in down rather than up a point or two. I thought it was one of our best halves all year.

“At the start of the second half Donegal came at us but a lot of it was down to our giving the ball away to them and they were catching us on the counter attack and getting scores. They were up two or three points at the start of the second half and it felt like they were up a lot more.

“I think we panicked, to be honest. Definitely Donegal had a game plan and it worked but I felt we had a game plan too and it’s not so much that the game plan didn’t work, more that it was our mistakes that made it look like our game plan wasn’t working whereas theirs was.

“I felt if we cut our mistakes down we would have been in with a bigger shout at the end of the game, maybe.”

Uncharacteristically, Cork started to go for goals early in that game.

“Yeah, we started taking shots from positions that we wouldn’t have done in the first half,” recalls O’Connor.

“It probably comes down to just panicking as a team and making mistakes that we wouldn’t usually have made. Maybe that’s what made it look like we were finding it extremely hard to break them down.”

The Cork star says new Cork selectors Brian Cuthbert, Ronan McCarthy and Michael ‘Haulie’ O’Neill have made a difference to the Rebel set-up.

“There is a change, Brian has taken a bit of the training maybe to give Peadar [Healy] a bit of a break.

“We had a small game amongst ourselves last week and Ronan took one side and Haulie took the other. We had Haulie and he was very interesting to listen to at half-time, his knowledge of the game and obviously Ronan is well respected around the county, he’s been there and done it and he knows what it takes.

“I think it’s only going to be a good thing to have all these lads involved.”

O’Connor is in line for a fourth [Division 1] Allianz Football League medal but says maintaining their status in the top flight is always the focus.

“I’d definitely take one [medal] but the last three years our first priority was to stay in Division 1.

“It might sound a bit weird to say after winning three-in-a-row but our first priority in all those years was to stay in Division 1 and it definitely hasn’t changed this year, because this year coming, it’s probably the hardest league that’s been there.

“There’s no easy game in the league and I think we’re away four times, so you can’t afford to get off to a bad start because if you get into a relegation fight, it’s probably the hardest thing to get out of.

“Conor [Counihan] always drills it into us, whether it’s a challenge game or not, we want to win every game so I don’t think anything is going to change this year.”

The first game is a glamour affair against Dublin.

“It’s under lights, which adds that extra buzz. It’s a double-header, maybe a few new guys involved so maybe they will be eager to get to Croke Park. It’s probably the best way to start, a good tough game.

“We’ve a fair idea where we are but we’ve a lot of work to do yet.”