We were hard done by, says exasperated Hayes

Sean Hayes’ face in the minutes after the final whistle went far beyond disappointment.

Exasperation would describe it better.

The Cork manager, his selectors and various officials and supporters conferred on the O’Moore Park pitch as the delirious Roscommon contingent hopped and bucked around them. There was considerable shaking of heads among the Munster fraternity. Like Cavan later in the afternoon, the Munster champions were left feeling hard done by, but there were no major remonstrations with the referee by anyone in red to match those directed at Derek O’Mahony after Dublin’s one-point win.

Diarmuid Murtagh’s winning free gave the first, epic game the sort of dramatic conclusion it fully deserved but the awarding of the crucial free left a raw taste at the time, even though referee Anthony Nolan was perfectly correct to penalise the Cork defender in question.

Hayes’ beef wasn’t with that. His view of that decision wasn’t the best. No, his opinion was that Murtagh’s kick should not have been the last act, regardless of whether or not it was a foul and a free in the first place.

“Our first-half performance was terrible, we made no bones about that, but at least we showed heart and came back, time and time again, to a draw. But with two minutes left there were about three fellas down with head injuries and if they were 40 seconds late I can’t count. Even a linesman said to me that it’s unfair but it’s not his call. In a game like this fellas train their heart out and don’t deserve to be treated like that but the referees do what they have to do and I can’t do anything about that. I just feel, for an All-Ireland semi-final, we were hard down by.”

It’s important to put post-match quotes in context. To do otherwise would be to insinuate that Hayes went off on a rant of biblical proportions when, in reality, he was merely responding to queries which almost universally related to the officials. That said, there was no disguising his displeasure. Rightly or wrongly, Cork felt aggrieved at some of the decisions made in the second-half.

“You saw (the decisions) and you can comment on them. I won’t disagree with you by any stretch of the imagination, but all you want when you play these games is fair play. You don’t want to be riding all the other teams, you just want fair play. I don’t think we got it but we have to take it on the chin.

“We just didn’t come out of the blocks at all but we showed a bit of heart to come back like we did against a very good Roscommon team. They are very good but that’s the way it goes.”