Brian Cuthbert pleased with progress

The blanket defence, the bane of Cork’s 2014, came back to bite them in Owenbeg yesterday, but Brian Cuthbert wasn’t getting overly worried about his side’s attacking performance.

Instead the Cork boss admitted he would be more concerned by his side’s defending after they conceded 2-15 to a Derry side that hadn’t exactly been setting the heather ablaze prior to yesterday.

Cork had led by 1-7 to 0-7 at half-time in front of a poor crowd of just 909, but two goals from Enda Lynn condemned the Rebels to their second league defeat of the season.

However, while admitting his side’s defending left a lot to be desired, Cuthbert wasn’t too worried about Cork’s attacking display.

“I suppose all games take lives of their own. In the first half, Derry had a lot of bodies back and we played through them and got some good scores.

“Second half, we didn’t play our system the way we wanted to. Once Derry got a bit of belief and life, they upped the ante and we didn’t.

“But I wouldn’t be overly concerned. Tyrone played a blanket defence against us and we scored 0-17. Monaghan played a blanket and we scored well.

“We’ve shown through the league that we have ways of playing against it. I think I’d be more concerned with our own defending.”

After a week in which the merits of their system in last weekend’s defeat by Dublin were debated the length and breadth of the country, Derry improved the attacking side of their game and, with the same system, racked up 2-15, with all but six points of it from play.

Derry boss Brian McIver revealed afterwards that he felt the criticism of his side was imbalanced and that Dublin were as much to blame on that occasion, but that the furore had done Derry no harm.

“The thing that annoyed me, by and large, was did anyone look at why for a lot of the match we had to go across the pitch as opposed to driving forward? The reason was that Dublin had set up by and large the same as us.

“I’m not pointing the finger at Dublin. They learnt from last year’s All-Ireland semi-final, when they were exposed.”

And Dublin would have been pleased with the defensive side of their performance that night.

“But of course all the fingers were pointed at Derry. In terms of getting the lads together as a tight unit, that actually did no harm.”