Walsh has confidence in Cork youngsters

For the second time in three years, Cork boss Denis Walsh was left reflecting on an All-Ireland Championship exit at the hands of Galway.

The Rebels got off to a promising start at the Gaelic Grounds in yesterday's third phase qualifier, helped by Paudie O'Sullivan's early goal.

But Galway's scoring power came to the fore and Walsh's men had no answer to the likes of Joe Canning (0-10), Damien Hayes (1-3) and Ger Farragher (0-4).

It remains to be seen if the Ballynoe man will remain in charge of Cork, but he reckons the county's young players are on the right road in terms of their development.

"My term is up obviously. I have no great thoughts on it (at the moment)," Walsh told RTÉ Radio 1 afterwards.

"If the mood in the county is for bringing in someone that's going to be fairly constructive and to move the thing on, we've blooded fellas in there.

"We can't hide behind saying there's a team there for the future, but certainly we've a lot of 19, 20, 21-year-olds involved and who understand what's required.

"They'll be outstanding players but certainly they'll need another year or two to produce that."

Nine players aged 23 or under got game-time for Cork yesterday afternoon, including teenagers Jamie Coughlan and Conor Lehane off the bench.

There were four 21-year-olds involved - midfielder William Egan, centre-forward Cian McCarthy, corner forward Luke O'Farrell and substitute Lorcan McLoughlin.

Walsh had some positives to draw on from the defeat, but agreed that Galway ran out deserving winners in the end.

"I suppose we were tremendous in the first 15 or 20 minutes and we played some brilliant hurling.

"In fairness, Galway knuckled down and they wore us down. All I can keep thinking about is maybe 10 or 12 minutes into the second half, it was 1-14 to 1-11 for a while - there was a goal in it - we had just missed a handy point chance and I think maybe James Skehill made a great save from Patrick Horgan, around that time.

"If we had taken over for five minutes maybe the thing could have been different but we didn't take over and you'd have to say that Galway fully deserved their victory.

"They took over from the 20th minute onwards and never left go after that. They proved their worth, to be honest."