Jamie O'Sullivan says Cork have turned the corner

Cork corner-back Jamie O’Sullivan has branded Saturday’s battling performance against All-Ireland champions Dublin as a step in the right direction for the county’s misfiring footballers.

Cork’s Croke Park display was far removed from the limp effort churned out when falling to Roscommon by 18 points the weekend previous.

“It was unacceptable last week. We spoke about that. It was evident that we were trying to bring up the workrate. You are looking at Colm O’Neill and he emptied himself, Kevin O’Driscoll emptied himself. More lads need to be doing that and we’ll be alright,” believes O’Sullivan.

“People looking in might have thought we had no character after last week. But being in the group, that is all that matters to us. We just looked around at each other, looked at ourselves and tried to up it.”

Despite the many positives to be gleaned from Saturday’s contest, which included holding Dublin scoreless for the opening 22 minutes, their first-half performance which returned them to the dressing-room 2-7 to 1-3 in front and the continued blossoming of Peter Kelleher at full-forward, Cork remain in the drop zone and without a win since the end of January.

Pride may have been temporarily restored, but their Division 1 status remains under threat.

“Realistically, we haven’t done enough yet. We came up to win, even if people might not have thought that was within our reach. At the end of the day, it is another loss and we need to be picking up wins if we want to stay up and go anywhere in the league.”

O’Sullivan continued: “We got a performance for 50 minutes. I’m not sure what we scored in the second-half. It wasn’t enough. We dropped a few short. You can’t be doing that. Few things like that cost us.

“We were up a bit at half-time, but I wouldn’t say we were optimistic. We had stuck to the game-plan which we didn’t do last week. You could see that in the first-half performance, maybe not so with the second-half performance. But the first-half was definitely an improvement.

“We knew what was coming [after half-time], it has come before. We gave it our all, but they are All-Ireland champions for a reason. We still have to keep improving. There is plenty of room for improvement. And while we’re disappointed with the result, look, it is a step in the right direction. We only have half our league matches played and we need to get a win next week.”

Travelling to Páirc Uí Rinn this Sunday is Monaghan.

“I saw a small bit of them last week. They look impressive. They are definitely knocking on the door. We are under a lot of pressure.”