Pat Mulcahy: Bright start provides some grounds for Cork optimism

Former Cork captain Pat Mulcahy believes that the county’s display in the opening 20 minutes of Sunday’s Munster SHC loss to Waterford gives a glimmer of hope for the remainder of the championship.

Having lost by 10 points to Waterford in the Allianz HL Division 1 final five weeks previous, Cork altered their approach and led early on before two Waterford goals turned the tide.

Mulcahy feels the limited time between the two games mitigated Cork’s attempts to modify their tactics.

“They did improve, and in the first 20 minutes it looked like they put a lot of work in,”Mulcahy said.

“They had a system and it was working, but from where I was looking, it looked like they didn’t have enough time to put it into place.

“Unless you repeat something over and over and over again, it won’t last for the full 70 minutes. Sometimes, it can take a whole season to put a new system in place, for the players to trust it.

“For the first 20 minutes, Cork were playing the right balls and they were having success but you could see then a couple of aimless balls go into the Waterford defence and that gave them a platform to attack Cork.

“Cork went with a man-to-man defence, which is fine when the forwards are working really hard and you don’t give the opposition time to send in really good ball.

“When Cork started sending in the aimless balls, it allowed Waterford a chance to pick out their forwards, give them one-on-one situations and Cork were opened up then.”

Mulcahy added: “It’s fine to go man-to-man if the opposition have six forwards but if they’re only playing two or three, you have to have an extra man, there’s no team in the country that can go man-to-man.

“You need numbers back. If Waterford had one in the full-forward line, Cork should have two back, one plus one.

“Cork did two things different from the league final, they went man-for-man and flooded midfield.

“Flooding midfield worked in the first 20 minutes, they made 10 or 12 scoring opportunities, but when the tempo of the game drops going man-for-man allows the opposition to pick out players.”

Looking ahead to the qualifiers, Mulcahy sees grounds for optimism.

“The big positive was that something worked for 20 minutes,” he said.

“There were parts of the first 20 minutes where Cork were very successful with what they did and they literally have to repeat that and perfect it.

“Time is tight but if they get the players to buy into it and get what you’d call a good back-door draw, it would be August before meeting opposition that would really, really test them.

“They’re starting on the back foot, but there are some good things to work on. The key is to build on what they did early in the game.”