Expectant Cork fans won’t settle for Munster success, says Meyler

Michael Moynihan

Cork manager John Meyler wasn’t surprised Clare won through to the Munster final with a home win over Limerick.

The Shannonsiders were widely expected to make it to the provincial final but Clare were far too strong for their neighbours. Having seen both teams up close, Meyler wasn’t startled by the result.

“No, not at all because we’ve been to Ennis twice ourselves this year and it’s extremely hard, very tight, it’s a challenging place to play — a bit like Wexford Park. Those are challenging places to go to for a win. And Clare needed a win to get to the Munster final, they had a week off before the game, and the Tipperary game gave them momentum to drive on.

Even listening to them on the radio after the Clare-Tipperary game they were talking about filling Cusack Park for the next day, getting the Banner roar going — so they were excited about playing Limerick, and beating Limerick, so I wasn’t surprised.

Meyler wasn’t buying suggestions that Clare had to hurl out of their skins to make the final while Cork had almost coasted to the decider.

“I don’t think there’s any ‘coasting’ in the Munster championship with the four games. “There was no coasting, the games were nearly all 50-50, bar Clare and Limerick, with Clare winning by 11 points. I wouldn’t say we’ve coasted into a Munster final.

“We’ve earned it, we’re unbeaten and we want to keep that. We need to put our performance together collectively but we’ve spoken about that, we’ve worked on that and we need to build on that.”

Meyler, a long-time fan of the round-robin system, was loud in his praise of this year’s format. “You couldn’t ask for better than the Munster championship this year, the games have all been superb, superb entertainment, incredible scores, really exciting. The Cork-Limerick and Cork-Tipperary games were very exciting.

And people have voted — there have been around 200,000 people at the Munster championship games so far, and that’s up on previous years. You couldn’t ask for more value.

“I think the format is super, Sunday after Sunday — and no cancelling games or putting them off for a month so you can’t get a run at it. You’re not going to play well all the time, you’ll play poorly some days, and the four games were there for everyone, three teams came out in the end.”

As for himself and his management team, Meyler said the pressure of the four games taught them a good deal about the team. “Character — I think the character showed, and the resilience came through. At different stages we played some incredible hurling and at other stages we were poor.

“The character showed against Tipperary — they went up, we came back again, the same against Limerick. The last 10 minutes against Waterford, I was delighted with the attitude shown by the lads, you couldn’t ask for more.”

Still, the Cork support will be asking for more on Sunday.

“There’s a level of expectation in Cork,” says Meyler. “Cork people want to win All-Irelands, that’s what they’re interested in and that’s what they’ve been used to, especially the older generation. That’s the bottom line.

“Clare want to win an All-Ireland, all the remaining teams want to win an All- Ireland. Sunday is another step, we want to get to the All-Ireland semi-final and that’s a shorter route.

“That doesn’t change in any county, it’s the bottom line. Winning is what it’s about.”

Are Cork more confident after last year’s campaign?

That’s built up over the last two years and it’s come out in different stages. The character has built up and the resilience, those are critical to a team which wants to win Munster and All-Ireland championships.”And Sunday’s opponents? Significantly enough, Meyler feels that Clare have learned as much as Cork in the last month or so of action.

“Incredible. We started off against them a few weeks ago down the Páirc and beat them by five points.

“They admitted they did a good amount of soul-searching after that match and probably reorganised themselves and the team. They did very well in their matches, they had a good, positive win over Limerick last time out, a Limerick team fancied to win the Munster championship.

"I think Clare have learned as much as we have over the last four or five games. We’ve looked at ourselves, they’ve looked at themselves. It’s going to be extremely challenging and I expect a full-blooded battle.”