Tomás Quinn: Cork facing a winter of hard questions

Thurles on a Saturday evening for knock-out championship with two teams still searching for their true identity.

Both Kildare and Cork would feature highly on most people’s list for flakiest teams around. Time and again both have shown glimpses of an ability to perform at an elite level and on paper both squads have enough individual quality to be delivering on a more consistent basis. Not only were questions being asked of the players, but Jason Ryan and Brian Cuthburt would have been aware of the importance of the game for their managerial futures.

Kildare had bounced back from the Leinster semi-final defeat to Dublin with wins over Offaly and Longford, giving them a momentum-building platform against a Cork team who only had six days to consider their replay defeat to Kerry.