Peadar Healy: No excuses, the best team won

Peadar Healy was in no mood for sympathy having seen his team outplayed for the vast majority of yesterday’s round two Division 1 game in Fr Tierney Park.

“I would not be commiserating with me – the best team won and that was the end of it. They dominated, they were physically strong than us, we have no excuses.

“In fairness to the players, they rallied well towards the end. We missed a few goal opportunities in the first-half but we have no excuses. The best team won, that was it.”

Healy, though, insisted neither of Cork’s opening two matches were indicative of their true stock at present. “We are not as bad as what we played today and we are not good as were against Mayo. We are somewhere in between so we won’t be getting carried away with last Sunday or this. We just have to pull up our socks and get ready for Roscommon now.”

Rory Gallagher brings his players on a five-day training camp in the Canary Islands later this month, delighted to have picked up maximum points in their first couple of games.

“It’s great to have won two. That’s unchartered territory for us over the last few years. It is pleasing to have two wins on the board heading into the break. We’re happy now we’ll get a good bit of physical work done this week and then we’re away to the training camp. The biggest thing is that we’re heading in a good frame of mind.

“We’ll have a good chance to work on our fitness and we’ll have a chance to talk about tactics and it’ll help with the integration too.” Gallagher said a cohort of seasoned Donegal players as well as Mark McHugh will shortly return to training.

“Colm (McFadden) had a wee (calf) setback but he’ll be back next week and Christy (Toye) is working his way back.

“Karl (Lacey) was back on the pitch on Thursday so we’ll see how it goes in the next number of weeks.”