As Cork reflect, Kingston pinpoints the moment it drifted away

Kieran Kingston was looking for positives after the All-Ireland final. The Cork selector didn’t begrudge Clare (“the better team”) their win, but he still regretted the might-have-beens.

“We’re very disappointed, there’s no other way to put it, it’s just that on the day we were chasing the game for the most part.

“From our perspective the positives were that we showed great heart, having been eight points down at one stage and we came back to draw. We felt we had a right chance, that we had the momentum, but we had chances and we didn’t take them and then they drove on.

“Clare were probably deserving winners, the better team on the day. It’s hard to win an All-Ireland when you conceded 5-16.”

Cork were reasonably happy at half-time, he added: “We felt we’d won the last 10 or 15 minutes of the first half having started poorly and conceded three early goals. The team showed great character and heart because most teams would have died after that, and if you died against this Clare team you could lose by 15 points. We were happy with that, but not happy with conceding 5-16.

“We knew they’d come out of the blocks quickly. We didn’t hit the ground running again, which was disappointing. And then to concede three goals was something we didn’t expect, because Clare haven’t been scoring goals all year.

“But obviously their tactic for this game was to run at us all the time, while they’ve been taking scores from out the field all year. We got to grips with the game and got right back into it, and we had a few chances . . . I felt that if we took the lead at any stage that we could go on and win it. That’s easy to say but you could see there was a little bit of panic in the Clare set-up. Then we conceded the fourth goal, which came from our mistake.

“It came out of nothing. I thought it [Conor McGrath’s strike] was a turning point. We were on top but while we hadn’t taken the lead we were hitting the breaks well. We’d been struggling early on off the breaks but our changes worked well, and then the fourth goal came.”

Kingston pointed to encouraging signs.

“We conceded a couple of frees, Conor [O’Sullivan] was blown for over-carrying near the end when they hadn’t scored for a while, but we have to take the positives. They showed fierce heart and character.

“To go that far down in an All-Ireland final and to go level showed that. Brian Murphy was very good on Podge Colllins, he was taken off, Stephen McDonnell was fantastic in the second half, and Tony Kelly was moved off him, Chris Joyce did well, it was Seamus Harnedy’s first season at this level.

“It’d be remiss not to mention Pa Cronin — he was much maligned after the drawn game but he was limited in training by an injury he carried from the All-Ireland semi-final. He was outstanding for us and most of our scores came off him. If you’d told us we’d score 3-16 you’d have given us a fair chance.

“I thought we were better than the last day, we knew Clare would focus on where we attacked them the last day, and to score 3-16 against that . . . it wasn’t to be. As a spectacle it was probably a very good game of hurling, but there’s no plaudits for that.

“Clare were the better team and scored 5-16, and any day you score that you’d expect to win the All-Ireland. That’s the bottom line. They’re a very good team, they played with huge confidence.”

And Cork? Making an All-Ireland final from an unpromising start to the season was a huge plus, said Kingston.

“The dressing room wasn’t a nice place to be. They were disappointed, very down, it’s been 11 months of a campaign and we have nothing at the end of it. But there’s pride back in Cork hurling, we’ll have a look at it and go again.

“If you’d have told us at the start of the year, or after the relegation game in Limerick, that we’d come so close to winning an All-Ireland, we’d have taken it, but we have nothing won and we’ll have to go again. Building on it, and building the lads back up, that’s the challenge.”