Goold: We must have 'ruthless attitude' to Clare clash

Having enjoyed such a good league campaign at number 10 for Cork, Fintan Goold could have been forgiven for looking forward to last month’s Munster SFC semi-final against Kerry.

In and out of the team since making his debut in 2005, the game represented a real chance for him to establish himself as a bona fide starter, but things were out of his hands as an infection forced him to sit out the game.

“The Saturday morning before the game, I woke with a swollen foot and felt kind of sick for the day,” Goold says.

“I kind of knew by that evening that I’d be out so I told Conor [Counihan]. It cleared up fine with the antibiotics, I’m back training now, no problems.

“It was unfortunate, you spend the whole season trying to prepare yourself physically, protecting quads and hamstrings, to be struck down with a rare thing like an infection is disappointing.

“We got over Kerry, which is great, I was as happy as anyone after that. Once I was physically right again it was a case of focusing on the next day and trying to get back in.”

The Macroom man has actually only started two Munster finals in the past, as a teenager in 2005 and ’06, winning the latter. As is so often the case, getting older provides the maturity to appreciate those chances when they come again.

“I was young, only around 18 or 19 at the time, it was a good while ago now. It’s been so long since I’ve gotten a start in a Munster final, maybe when you’re young you don’t appreciate it.

“When you’ve been out of the team for a number of years you start to realise that these chances don’t come around too often, that’s why missing out the last day was so disappointing.”

[comment]Video provided courtesy of the Munster GAA.[/comment]

As part of such a talented panel, however, Goold is enough of a realist to know that if chances are not taken, others are able to come in and do a more-than-satisfactory job.

“What do you do? You have to focus on what you can do, that’s getting yourself right mentally and physically, when you’re given an opportunity that’s the big thing.

“Competition is so strong that when you’re trying to break into a team you really have to try and grasp the opportunity with two hands.

“Particularly over the past few campaigns I’ve taken the league seriously, as when you are a regular maybe it’s a bit easier to have an off-day or two but when you’re trying to break in there every league game is important.”

In all cases, though, he is self-aware enough to know that mistakes can be learned from.

“When I was younger things maybe didn’t go for me and you’d have regrets and so on, but you’ve got to look at it after and assess what you did well and what you didn’t do well and try to improve, that’s what you have to do.

“You take on board the criticism from management and so on and try and be a better player for it.

“You’ve got to be able to take criticism on the chin, as much so as you take praise with a pinch of salt.

“I’m not under any illusions, you know yourself when you play well and you know yourself when don’t, a lot of the time you don’t need anybody else to tell you.

“You’re playing enough games for enough years to know that.”

And it is that kind of experience that should help Cork in what is almost being looked at as a no-win game on Sunday, raging-hot favourites against Clare.

Win narrowly and you’re struggling; win too well and you won’t be sharp the next day.

“You really just have to focus on yourself, it’s all down to attitude,” the chemical engineer says.

“It’s different, there’s no point saying otherwise. People expect you to win, and you’ve got to deal with that, but the one thing we have realised throughout the league is that we’ve mixed the very good with the very bad.

“If you analyse the days when we were bad, a lot of it was just down to poor attitude and poor work-rate, they’re the fundamentals to everything in the modern game, the way it’s so intense and so defensive and attacking has become so, so critical.

“They all follow on from having the right attitude and being fully focused and if enough players going into the game against Clare are not fully tuned in, that game can become very tough, very quickly.

“You’ve got to go in and take a ruthless attitude to it.”

That ruthless attitude extends to making the most of his footballing capabilities, but that’s not to say that the sport is all-consuming or that he doesn’t enjoy it.

“I don’t know, I think that some people make it out like it’s some sort of chore, we all do this because we love doing it, it’s a fantastic opportunity.

“It can be difficult, there are nights and days when you’re tired and you’d like to give training a skip but they’re the nights when it’s most important to drag yourself out of that lethargic attitude.”