Ring: Young Rebels will just stick to the process
Denis Ring has dismissed the 20-year gap since Cork’s last U21 All-Ireland hurling title as an irrelevance.
Ring’s side are within one game of ending that drought after Saturday’s filleting of Wexford in Kilkenny and there will be little limit on expectation outside the camp on the back of it.
“With this particular team, we don’t talk about years, we don’t talk about anything, we talk about a performance,” he said.
“The next match is the next performance and it’s about getting it right for that and sticking with the process and doing everything right.
“Years are just figures, they’re conversation pieces, they’re irrelevant to this team. This team is about 60 minutes or 70 minutes or whatever it’s going to take, extra-time or whatever it is. It’s about getting it right for that.”
And Cork got pretty much everything right on Saturday.
If Wexford were poor then they were railroaded in that direction by a slick, powerful and focused opponent that led from the fifth minute.
The manner in which they stuck to the script long after the contest was decided was impressive. And instructive.
Eight of their players — the injured David Griffin would have made it nine — featured in the senior squad that lost to Limerick in Croke Park six days earlier and if they used that loss for anything then it was to fuel their motivation.
The likes of Mark Coleman, Darragh Fitzgibbon and Shane Kingston all played impressive parts in dominating the Leinster finalists but this is a Cork side awash with talent and intent from front to back — and on the bench as well.
The Cork team that won this title in 1998 boasted the likes of Dónal Óg Cusack, Diarmuid O’Sullivan, Sean Óg Ó hAilpín and Joe Deane and Ring didn’t shirk when asked if this vintage could produce senior players of similar standard.
“They’re already beginning to do it. And, look, we need them. The experience they’re getting is fantastic. As long as you’re playing in the last game of the competition you can’t be getting better experience than that.”
They were a class apart from a Wexford side making do without injured marksman-in-chief Rory O’Connor.
The Leinster side’s forwards, bar corner-forward Seamus Casey, were largely dominated for the duration. Their midfield was used as a runway for countless men in red as they took off into enemy territory and the Cork forwards roamed and scored at will.
Robbie O’Flynn was the only one of the six starting attackers not to contribute to a scoreboard that must have been overheating by the end. The other five racked up 3-19 between them. All bar 0-6 of that came from play.
Cork were 11 points to the good at half-time, having broken Wexford’s will early on via Tim O’Mahony’s seventh and ninth-minute goals. Liam Healy’s green flag 40 minutes in stretched the advantage out to 16.
Many is the team that has lost its way at that juncture, disorientated by the unexpectedly easy proceedings and bored by the listless nature of the challenge. Cork ploughed on, Conor Cahalane coming off the bench to plunder four points for himself.
The only negative was the loss of centre-forward Declan Dalton to an apparent knee injury in the second-half. The Fr O’Neill’s man was superb from dead balls, added another two from play and was influential in general play as well.
That injury aside, Ring had little else to fret over. Cork appear to be getting better with each game. Waterford were seen off with three points to spare, Tipperary with 10 in the Munster decider and now Wexford on the back of a 22-point buffer.
Neither Galway nor Tipperary would countenance any such slaughter. Those two meet in the second semi-final, in Gaelic Grounds in Limerick, on Wednesday evening with the Tribesmen fancied to advance. But Ring doesn’t see that as a certainty.
Tipp may have fallen flat against Cork in the Munster final but they were nine points the better team against Limerick two weeks prior to that, dethroning the reigning provincial and All-Ireland champions who had half-a-dozen county seniors in their ranks.
“They didn’t become a bad team overnight. They’re going to be back and they’re going to give Galway plenty of it on Wednesday night. But Galway are a super team as well. It’s going to be interesting for us as well to be able to sit back and look at it.”
D Dalton (0-8, 6 frees); T O’Mahony (2-2); J O’Connor, S Kingston and C Cahalane (all 0-4); L Healy (1-1); A Myers (0-2 frees); C O’Leary (0-1).
S Casey (0-6, 3 frees and 1 sideline); A Maddock, D Reck and R White (all 0-2); C Hearne (0-1).
G Collins; D Lowney, E Murphy, N O’Leary; J Cashman, G Millerick, B Hennessy; M Coleman, D Fitzgibbon; R O’Flynn, D Dalton, S Kingston; L Healy, T O’Mahony, J O’Connor.
C Cahalane for Millerick (36); A Myers for Dalton (53); D Connery for Fitzgibbon (55); C O’Leary for Kingston (59); C O’Callaghan for Coleman (61).
J Cushe; S Reck, D Byrne, E Molloy; C Firman, I Carthy, R White; A Maddock, G Molloy; O Foley, D Reck, L Stafford; M Dwyer, R Higgins, S Casey.
S O’Gorman for S Reck (25); D Codd for Stafford and C Hearne for Foley (both HT); E Kelly for Higgins (41); J Donohue for Byrne (46).
A Kelly (Galway).
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