McDonnell a huge doubt for county final

Experienced Glen Rovers defender Stephen McDonnell is a serious injury doubt for the Cork SHC final.

The Cork corner-back was forced out of

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“Stephen is a warrior. If he’s not right, we’ll have to rethink the situation. Adam Lynch came on and was very good in the second-half.

“Young Danny Morris came on too. We have options but Stephen is a leader. We need Stephen, but he has to be 100% to be playing in a county final because you just won’t get away with it if you are not,” said Kelleher.

I heard he had [the problem] coming into the game. That was the first I heard of it. They keep things from me because they all want to be playing. We will give him every treatment and every chance.

Kelleher is pleased with how the team have kicked on after a “very hard” summer.

“We got a couple of pastings in the league. You know you are weakened but you still want to be competitive. We had some league games where I was left scratching my head.

“One Monday night away to Ballinhassig, we were nine up. They turned us over and we ended up losing.

“The only way to fix that is to throw a couple of hard games at the players. I went up the country and got some hard challenge games to punish them because we lost a bit of our focus. When they are performing, we leave them alone.

“When things are wrong, they have to be punished and that is what we did. This performance are the days you dream of. It was a dream day.”

Four county final appearances in six years is remarkable consistency.

“Going back 10 or 15 years, the club was probably on its knees. The hurling has turned it around. We are a thriving club once again. We are in a minor county final [this evening]. There are loads of young fellas coming through.”