Christopher Joyce: Cork are sticking to a game plan now

In 2017, Cork’s starting team went unchanged across their four championship outings. Yes, the men being selected were doing the business, but there was also a sense the bench lacked sufficient depth.

A case in point being their Munster campaign, in which the same six defenders started and finished all three games. That tells you its own story.

This year has been different; those who spent much of last year in the wings have been given an opportunity and they’ve taken it with both hands.

Sean O’Donoghue has come in for Stephen McDonnell, the latter opting out for this year.

Eoin Cadogan stepped in midway through the Munster round-robin when Mark Ellis injured his groin, while Daniel Kearney has been reborn upon his return to the starting team. Young Robbie O’Flynn was another to get his chance.

In sum, there has been more variation than was the case last year and with no effect on their graph.

After a league campaign which produced just two victories and contained a losing streak which ran for four consecutive games, Cork, unsurprisingly, slipped down the Munster rankings coming into the summer. Such talk didn’t bother half-back Christopher Joyce.

He knew what their spring was about and was confident a panel had been assembled which would see them through the new round-robin system.

“We weren’t focused on what people were saying. We knew we were building and we knew what our plan was going forward. That plan was to find new players and we did that,” said Joyce.

“During the league, we played a lot of new guys. That, ultimately, helped our squad for the Munster campaign. It drove training. It brought fellas on.”

“Most of those guys that got game-time in the league did end up getting game-time in the championship.”

“Robbie O’Flynn started the first day in the championship and got a bit of a knock. Tim O’Mahony, Eoin Cadogan, you had a lot of guys this year who weren’t part of it last year.”

Joyce is also effusive in his praise of the young panel members who have yet to see championship minutes in 2018.

“There is probably 11 U21s training with us at the moment. They are bringing a massive energy to training. We are playing a lot of in-house games and you are getting no easy game. You can’t come to training saying, ‘I’m tired tonight’, because you’ll get a clipping.

“It is great to have these fellas pushing the fellas on who have been longer on the panel. You are not sitting back and feeling comfortable. For my own position, you have Eoghan Murphy and Billy Hennessey. You have Mark Coleman. There are a lot of good guys coming through.

“There hadn’t been a U21 title won since 2007 and these guys now have one. They have that winning feeling. They want game-time. They are not coming in happy to be part of it, they want to play.”

That attitude was perfectly captured in Darragh Fitzgibbon’s decision to make himself available for the Munster final, despite not feeling well for the two days beforehand. He’d finish the afternoon as one of two Cork players nominated for man of the match.

Such was his contribution, on top of his ill-health, the Charleville midfielder lasted just 22 minutes in the Munster U21 final three days later.

“Darragh is a special talent,” says Joyce.

“He was sick, but he was willing to put it on the line for Cork. Another day, you might have felt sorry for yourself, you might have been worried that I’ll play bad, because I’m sick, and take the easy option and not play. He didn’t shy out of it.

“This guy is 21. He was still willing to take it on, even though he wasn’t feeling well. You saw the performance he gave. He is a massive part of the panel.”

Sunday will be Joyce’s fifth All-Ireland semi-final. He’s played in three of the previous four. Last year was disappointing, but the 26-year-old doesn’t envisage Cork making the same mistakes they did when falling to Waterford by 11 points.

“Our ultimate goal in 2017 was to build a game plan that suits the team and we found that. It was our first year buying into it and fellas were really trying to build performances from that game plan. Ultimately, we didn’t perform against Waterford. We fell out of the game plan on the day. We didn’t have the confidence to execute it. This year, it was about improving the game plan, bringing it further.

“In previous years, we have broken from the game plan, panicked and started launching high balls in. When we got ourselves into trouble this year, we stuck to that game plan and that is what got us out of trouble against Limerick, Tipperary, and Clare.”