O'Sullivan to make most of second chance

Conor O'Sullivan has been ultra-consistent in the Cork rearguard this summer.

Although he has acted as an extra man in defence a couple of times, against Kilkenny and Dublin in the quarter-final and semi-final after Henry Shefflin and Ryan Dwyer were dismissed, his positional sense and his ability to play the sweeping role was a major contributory factor in Cork’s emergence against the two Leinster teams.

In the drawn encounter with Clare, he settled well after some early hesitancy against Podge Collins and he ended up being one of the few Cork players to come out with credit in his account.

Whatever role he is given on the team, he embraces it with both hands and another good day at the office on Saturday will surely put him into All-Star country.

But it’s and only Clare that occupies his thoughts and getting his hands on that Celtic Cross is the only thing he will be thinking of.

Reflecting on day one between the teams, he believes that Cork will be better for the experience.

“The lads ran out on the pitch, I’d say I was six or seven back and I kind of heard the noise before I saw anyone and you know then where you are, in an All-Ireland final.

“You look around and there’s not one empty seat and in that first few minutes you try and take in the atmosphere, try and enjoy that and then get down to the pre-match schedule.

“The management had told us what to expect when we got out there but nothing really prepares you for that moment, that wall of noise that greets you.

“If you’re not a bit nervous before that there’s something wrong with you, I wasn’t a ball of nerves, a small bit maybe. You get it out of your system in the warm up, you want to enjoy yourself as well, you won’t do that if you are nervous.”

Despite being just two points in arrears at the break, the first-half did not go particularly well for Cork, something that the Sars man acknowledged.

“We were haunted to be in it at half-time, but we worked our way into the game. I suppose everyone thought they’d play a sweeper system as they had done but they went 15 on 15, you just have to prepare for everything and they might play a sweeper the next day.

“You just have to be ready for everything and if we had used a sweeper system it would probably have been me as I had done it before against Kilkenny and Dublin.

“You have to be able to react to what is put in front of you.”

Drawn encounters suit nobody, the players in particular and, according to O’Sullivan, the immediate aftermath of the first instalment between the counties was fairly shattering.

“Shattered really, even if you didn’t play you were going up on Saturday at one o’clock, you are out late on the Sunday, it’s a long weekend. An anti-climax is the only word you’d use to describe it, I said that 20 times the night of the match but that is what it was.

“The banquet was dead, I was sorry for anyone who paid a 100 for it, a plate of roast beef in front of them, that was about all they got, it was dead.

“You are prepared for your year to be finished one way or the other, we didn’t see the draw coming, that was 10 or 12 to one.

“I took the Tuesday off work because I was so shattered but then you get back into the swing of things.”

Training resumed the following Friday night and it has been all systems go since, there is a renewed enthusiasm now to go out and finish the job.

“It was two weeks then, an All-Ireland final and we just said that we might never again get that chance so whatever we were going to be asked to do we did it.”

And hoping now that things will go better overall for the team.

“We certainly would hope that there’s more in us, Clare are probably saying the same, no doubt they’d be disappointed too the way some things went for them so they feel they have more as well.”

The drama of the last few dramatic moments is something he certainly won’t forget in a while, Pat Horgan’s lead score for Cork and Domhnall O’Donovan’s equaliser for Clare.

“I was in the middle of the pitch, about on my own for Hoggy’s point and if there was ever a score worthy of winning an All-Ireland, that was it. There was no backswing, I don’t know how he got the power, he was about 50 yards out near the line and O’Donovan’s point was a great score too.

“In fairness I don’t think he has scored much in his lifetime, but in fairness he did it. Before that I was just praying for the whistle but if it was the other way around he’d have given us the extra 30 seconds.’’

And as a corner-back himself, would he have been able to replicate that Clare score?

“I would have clung it, no bother at all. It would have been robbery if we won it, we led for the first time in the 71st minute and Clare were the better team for the vast majority of the match to be fair but it would have been sweet if we had won by a point when we didn’t deserve it.”

This story first appeared in the Evening Echo.