John Meyler: Up or down Cork have shown great character

Cork manager John Meyler paid tribute to his side’s character in coming from behind to win yesterday’s round-robin game, but acknowledged their display against Waterford “wouldn’t do” against an in-form Clare team.

“We’re in the Munster final,” said Meyler. “We set our game-plan out way back in January, that we’d be one of the three teams to qualify out of this group for the quarter-finals or whatever.

“The game today afforded us the opportunity to reach a Munster final, we’ve reached a Munster final, and that’s it in a nutshell.

“We have Clare in a couple of weeks but that performance today wouldn’t do. The last ten minutes were very good but we need to look at that and examine it going forward.”

Meyler acknowledged that Cork had taken the wrong options at times but added that the build-up to the game — Waterford were out of contention before yesterday’s match began — made for a tricky week’s preparation.

“Decision-making was poor at times, but the build-up to the game was quite difficult — Waterford were out of it, would they turn up, what team were they going to play, younger fellas and subs. Derek McGrath and Dan Shanahan deserve great credit for that but the bottom line is that we’re in a Munster final.”

Meyler paid tribute to Bill Cooper, who stormed into yesterday’s proceedings in the second half: “He tore into the game and got some critical scores, there was more energy out of him — they were crowded in the first half with Jamie Barron and those lads but Bill drove into it in the second half.

“He hit one bad wide at the Town End but he’s the kind of player that you need that kind of performance again in two weeks’ time.”

The closing stages, when Cork hit 1-4, were the main positive for Meyler.

That’s character coming out of the lads, we’ve shown that in all our matches. Whether we’ve been up or whether we’ve been down we’ve shown great character. Horgan’s point, Harnedy’s goal, they were good scores.

“Waterford had a chance there with a free in about the 74th minute but we got to it and blocked it.”