Happy McGrath says mood and spirit is ‘fantastic’

In a long playing career with Cork, Seánie McGrath has seen a few sterling performances.

Few would have matched this display on Saturday night. A run of 14 consecutive unanswered points against Tipperary in a competitive game? What can a selector do but only doff the hat to his team.

McGrath agreed: “It was a great start. People were asking me about our spirit – we felt all through the off-season in training that the mood was fantastic. To be honest we felt this performance was in them, the spirit for the last few weeks has been really good, the couple of games we had in the Waterford Crystal and the challenge games have gone well. We probably didn’t anticipate such a good start – I think in fairness Tipperary’s radar was a bit off, they had a lot of uncharacteristic wides but you saw when Kelly and Corbett came on, they were a different team. They’re going to be a huge team come the championship but we’re delighted with the start.”

He has every reason to be, especially with only five round-robin games again this year and now, already, two big points in the bag for Cork.

“Last year, winning the Waterford game set up the whole season for us (first-round win, Cork went on to reach the league final) – this was the same and hopefully it will set up the season for us. We’re going down to Waterford next, I don’t know what that’s going to be like but for now, this is a great start. The second half, I wouldn’t say we took the foot off the gas but they dominated a little bit which wa disappointing. We made a few substitutions to try and revitalise the thing but overall we couldn’t complain about the performance.”

One man who really caught the eye for Cork was midfielder Daniel Kearney, looking like the second coming of the brilliant Jerry O’Connor. McGrath nodded: “He was great, got three great points, a bit like the way Jerry always contributed from play. He’s a great linkman who gives it everything. His energy for the last few years at Sars has been unbelievable and is probably one of the main reasons they’ve been so successful in the county championships.

“Again tonight he gave a massive effort, the substitution (60th minute) was based purely on the fact that he had emptied the tank and had no more to give.”

In the opposite camp, and despite the fact his side had managed to draw the second half with Cork (1-9 to 0-12), new Tipperary manager Eamon O’Shea wasn’t trying to take positives from the loss. “No, there was very little consolation, they outplayed us comprehensively throughout the game.

“We may have drawn the second half but they were much better, much sharper, much more advanced than we were. It’s very early in the season so even though we’re disappointed, it’s still the first game and sometimes you get these results in the league, which isn’t to take anything from Cork’s victory, they were outstanding A lot of our players are five years on the go, we’ve got to come up with something different, that’s quite clear.

” Cork were very sharp but we shouldn’t really have been taken by surprise.

“It’s my job to figure out what went wrong and that’s not easy to do within half-an-hour (of the finish) but quite clearly we didn’t perform.”