O’Farrell may need surgery on shoulder injury

Cork attacker Luke O’Farrell may require surgery on a shoulder injury sustained in the county’s opening Allianz League Division 1B clash with Limerick last month.

O’Farrell was on the field for just four minutes after coming on as a substitute in that drawn tie and selector Johnny Crowley has revealed that the injury is more serious than first thought.

“Luke’s injury is looking like it’ll be an operation job,” Crowley said. “He’ll definitely miss the game against Offaly and he’ll probably be out for a while, but otherwise we’ll have nearly everybody available.

“Conor O’Sullivan is still out too but it’s just a case of letting his injury heal at its own pace. Paudie O’Sullivan is out as well but he’s recovering well too. You don’t want to be rushing fellas back. We’ll also have to see how Michael O’Sullivan and Jamie Coughlan are after the Fitzgibbon Cup but we’re hopeful their injuries aren’t too bad.”

Cork will also be without Brian Murphy for Sunday’s league clash with Offaly in Páirc Uí Rinn (1pm), but Crowley insists that no decision has been made on the defender’s future.

Murphy, the last remaining member of the Cork panel to have won an All-Ireland medal on the field of play, has yet to feature for Jimmy Barry-Murphy’s side this year.

“No decision has been taken yet, that’s all that can be said at the moment,” Crowley said.

Limerick had a massive 23 points to spare in their win against Antrim and Crowley admits they have ground to make up on scoring differences which could potentially decide the Division winners.

“It’s not where we want to be,” he said, “we know that we should have beaten Limerick when we played them. They had a good win against Antrim and obviously we want to do as well as we can, but you have to remember that Offaly aren’t just coming down for the sake of it. The first thing that we have to make sure of is winning the game. In any case, it’s probably a bit insulting to Wexford to be talking about scoring difference when they’re top of the table. There’s a lot of hurling to go yet.”