Cuthbert: We’ve a mountain of work to do

Cork manager Brian Cuthbert was clearly frustrated with his side’s lateral play in Saturday night’s narrow win over Tipperary in the Munster SFC semi-final.

Cuthbert’s Cork had been direct in the National League, but that was a “million miles away” from their slow build-up play on Saturday.

“You’ve seen the league games and it was a million miles away from what we were trying to do.

“It happens — mentally it’schampionship and fellas revert to type very easily. We have a lot of straight talking to do with people to make sure we don’t revert to type again.

“I’m delighted they dug it out. When we look at it again we’ll probably be disappointed with the display, but the overriding emotion is that it’s championship and it’s about getting to the next round. Lots of teams go on to do very well after scraping through the first round.”

Cuthbert was full of praise for Aidan Walsh’s match-winning contribution late on: “You’d have to credit Aidan for what he did there at the end in the last six or seven minutes, he’s kicked very little football, and to kick those off his right and left to win the game for us, it’s a fair testament to him.

“We said going into this game that if we could get a tough game it’d be even better, and we were certainly put to the pin of our collar.

“It’ll stand to us in two weeks’ time [in the Munster final].

“Tipperary pressed us inside in the 45, they had bodies back and sometimes they had 12,13 behind the ball — no matter what you do that’s hard to play against. We had a chance of a goal and should have taken it — a foot on the line, and then they go down and get a goal at the other end. After chasing the game to lead, we didn’t feel that was a true reflection of possession in the first-half.

“What we didn’t want was them going to the dressing room at half-time with belief, and after they got that goal they had massive belief. They didn’t spare anything, they gave it everything, and it took fair fortitude for us to keep plugging away. We could have panicked easily but we played quite well in the last 10 minutes because there was a bit more space.”

Brian Hurley, Cork’s star forward in the league, had an unhappy evening: “It was three [markers] on one, but he’s going to get that. We have very good forwards to come on. It didn’t go right for a lot of the lads who started today, but that’s the nature of championship. You have to have a good panel and we won’t be slow to take guys on or off. Tipperary’s game plan was coming off to perfection, ours wasn’t.”

Cuthbert didn’t blame the long break since the league semi-final for the display.

“It was a long gap but we knew we’d have that and planned accordingly. Would we have changed anything in that plan? No. We felt we did everything we should have. I’m thrilled we won but there’s a mountain of work to do.

“I thought our decision-making was good on the line, that wereacted quickly to things and changed things quickly. It doesn’t matter to me if it’s 5,000 or 70,000 in the crowd, the thing is to get through.”