Relaxed Counihan believes provincial defeat may aid Cork

It’s rare the media finds Conor Counihan in anything but a good mood and Monday evening’s press evening ahead of their All-Ireland quarter-final was another of those occasions.

Having been described as a good man but not a good manager by Joe Brolly, he was asked what he made of the comment: “And you want me to say what a nice fella Joe is and we’ll cut it at that!”

The line is delivered with a chuckle just as his reply to a question about whether Dublin’s absence of a sweeper will suit Cork: “If I say that it did, they might stick one in!”

But would Dublin convince him to change tact with his team’s style? “We’ll play 14 behind the ball, something new! We’ll put [Alan] Quirke up front to confuse people!”

As you might guess, Counihan rarely gives anything tangible away about how he sets up his team but he does provide the odd nugget of useful information.

Like, how he believes in hindsight Cork are better prepared for a quarter-final having beaten Galway last weekend than they would have been beating Kerry at the start of July.

“We laid our stall out at the start of the year, we wanted to win the Munster final, but we’re in a much better place now having played that game last week.”

Like, how he isn’t too certain it’s best to finish games with the best team available. “There’s a danger in that, it might be too late to get the whip out! It’s bit like a racehorse and trying to hold him, it could be too late.”

The question is a pertinent one as picking the right team is a quandary for Counihan at the moment and this is a different Dublin side to the one they wore down into submission in the 2010 All-Ireland semi-final.

Bernard Brogan, scoring over 70% of Dublin’s Championship total in 2010, was their danger man three years ago but there are many more scoring threats now.

“I wouldn’t have realised that he had such a big percentage of their scores. Obviously, it’s a much bigger threat, the fact that it’s spread around a bit more but we’d like to believe that we have a relatively talented bunch of players as well.”

Counihan continued: “They’re the favourites and rightly so, a very talented team, not dependent on individuals anymore. It’s going to be a huge game for us but it’s a huge opportunity.

“Most of our guys have been there before and faced Dublin in the past. We’ve always performed reasonably well against Dublin, we’re looking forward to this.”

Counihan is not one for crossing swords with opposing managers but disagrees with Jim Gavin who believes Dublin were tested in the games against Westmeath and Kildare prior to Meath giving them problems in the Leinster final.

Speaking about their full-back line specifically, Counihan remarked: “I don’t think they had been under much pressure up until that. You analyse a team over a number of games. If you have some fella playing well in the half-back line, the next day he might be slightly over-confident and not tuned in so you can’t dwell too much on that.”