Ten days on from Cork's All-Ireland glory, a new journey begins with Tipperary test

Cork's Conor O'Callaghan celebrates after the 2020 All-Ireland U20 Hurling Championship Final at UPMC Nowlan Park. Photo by David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile

As Championship preparations go, Cork’s run-in to this evening’s Munster U20 semi-final has been most unorthodox. Then again, management had no option but for that to be the case.

Cork begin this season’s U20 hurling championship as reigning All-Ireland champions. What hardly needs stating is the fact that that All-Ireland was won 10 days ago.

The consequences of last year’s championship concluding so close to the start of this year’s edition is that Cork’s 2021 class have been together as a panel for all of a week and a half, no more than one hand required to count the number of sessions that took place during this small window.

That’s not to say significant work didn’t take place in the weeks and months before the delayed 2020 championship was completed.

At the beginning of the year, manager Pat Ryan and his backroom team put together an U20 development squad consisting of 33 players, this figure not including the 16 players eligible for the U20 grade in 2021 who were part of last year’s panel.

The development squad members were given programmes to follow during lockdown number three and when U20 teams were permitted to return to collective training on May 10, 10 players from the development squad would train with the 2020 panel on a particular night, with another 10 coming in the next night, and so on.

As the delayed All-Ireland final neared, the development panel trained separately to last year’s group. And once the 2020 season was done and attention turned to this evening’s game, 16 were plucked from the development group and merged with the 16 survivors from the All-Ireland 2020-winning panel to form the 2021 class.

“We had 65 players on the go between the development panel and last year’s panel. It worked well, but you need good cooperation and a good coaching plan, and then you need fellas to carry it out,” said Pat Ryan.

“I am very lucky in the fellas that are with me. Donal O’Mahony, as coach, has been absolutely superb in driving things forwards. Declan Fitzgerald and Traolach Martin did an awful lot of coaching with the development group and did a fantastic job under Donal’s stewardship.”

But for all the work put in, it is impossible to create in 10 days the trust and unity that formed within the 2020 group over a period of 18 months.

“It is on the night and you are just hoping things will go right for them. There are a lot of fellas who didn’t make the All-Ireland final matchday 24 and some of those who did didn’t come on, so this is a big opportunity for them.

“We put an awful lot of eggs into the basket of winning the All-Ireland and knew if we did win it, we are on a high and can bring fellas through.

“We know we are meeting a very good Tipperary team, but at the same time we know we are very good, and we’ll need to be very good to beat them.”