McCarthy not interested in moral victories
Ronan McCarthy wasn’t interested in hearing about progress.
Close on 12 months ago, 14 of the players who featured on Saturday evening were on the receiving end of a 3-20 to 0-13 thumping from Tyrone.
That the gap has been substantially closed, that Cork are now able to live with Division 1 teams was of no consolation to the manager after Saturday night’s defeat.
“We have now come away from another game which was certainly within our grasp and we haven’t closed it out. Others might look at it and say, we have made progress, but we are bitterly disappointed with the fact that we haven’t made progress [in the Super 8s],” McCarthy said.
The learnings from their exposure to Super 8s football, or “hard learnings”, as McCarthy described them, are rather simple. When on top, one must drive home their advantage and when under the cosh, one cannot be as porous as Cork were early in the second-half of this fixture.
“When the opposition is on top, you go back to basics and do those basics well. We didn’t do that, at times. I don’t want to be overly critical of the players. There is a marvellous group of players. They want to be successful with Cork. Certainly, they are putting everything they can into doing that.
Certainly there will be regret, particularly at how Cork’s six-point lead was wiped out in the space of four second-half minutes.
“Tyrone are obviously a very experienced side, a top side, and they were probably going to have a period of dominance. What proved critical from our point of view was that we conceded so much so quickly. We went from six up to two down in the space of four minutes.
"But, at least, we came back and kept at it, kept going up the field and kept trying to score.
As the half progressed, I felt the game was played more on their terms than it was ours. We never, as the game went on, looked tight enough at the back. They looked like they could score a lot of the times they went down.
Reflecting on the first period, he added: “I thought we managed the game very well in the first-half, it was textbook play really. It wasn’t pretty on the eye but that is not our fault. We were patient, we probed, and we waited for our opportunities. We did that really well.
“As the first-half went on, we were caught, two or three times, taking the ball into contact. And while we did start the second-half quite well, when they had their period of dominance, we conceded too much.”
For the second weekend in-a-row, Cork conceded a flood of scores late on, with Tyrone registering five points to their opponents’ one between the 61st and 70th minute. Although the evidence suggested otherwise, McCarthy said fatigue was not at play here.
“We have played Kerry, Dublin, and Tyrone now, you are talking about an elite level. Our game management, at times, probably left us down a small bit.
"It is the kind of thing you can talk about, decision-making and all of that, but you only learn it against the elite teams when you are under pressure in big matches. We have had a lot of learning in those games.”
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