Pat Ryan rules out naming Cork 'dummy team' as fresh injury doubt emerges

"I don't believe in pulling strokes, to be honest. We'll turn up, we'll man up, we'll go at you and leave the other opposition do the same to us," says Ryan.

Wed, 02 Jul, 2025 - 19:39

Andrew Horgan, Pairc Ui Chaoimh

Cormac O’Brien has emerged as an injury doubt for Cork’s All-Ireland hurling semi-final against Dublin, manager Pat Ryan has confirmed.

The Rebels have already been dealt an injury blow ahead of the last-four clash at Croke Park as Séamus Harnedy, who Ryan believes is irreplaceable, was ruled out at the beginning of the week with a hamstring injury that could also see him miss the final, should they progress.

While O’Brien’s issue isn’t as serious, he faces a race against time to be fit and help Cork on Saturday evening in their bid to reach back-to-back All-Ireland finals.

"Cormac O'Brien is a bit of a doubt now as well,” began Ryan, who will otherwise have a fully fit squad to choose from with Ger Millerick available for selection.

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“It's a small bit of a quad thing. If you remember back, Cormac did a quad against Clare starting off. He kind of re-injured it again.

“It's nothing major; it's just a question of whether he'll be right to get back on the field.

“He was on the field a bit last night, but we were hoping he'd have done a bit more. We'll see where that lies. We'll just see where that lies on Wednesday night.

“But Séamus is definitely out. We're hoping that Cormac and Ger will be OK. Ger was back hurling. To be honest, it surprised us a bit. He took a bit of a part on Saturday, but he took a full part last night in training, so that was a good thing for us.

“When it's not a leg injury or a back injury or one of those, your hand kind of comes around quickly enough.

“There's a bit of strapping on it but he's in good shape physically. They've got a lot of work into him so he's probably in the best condition he's ever been in physically for himself, which is great."

For any Cork fans that may be hoping Ryan could be playing mind games with his team news in the lead-up to this hugely important match, the Sarsfields man quickly ruled out the possibility of such notions.

While other managers in other counties may try to spring a surprise with their line-up on the day and make numerous changes from the side they announced a couple of days earlier, Ryan won't be adopting a similar tactic.

"Well, you can't keep anything (quiet) in Cork,” continued Ryan, who will tell the squad his starting 15 on Wednesday night.

“Everybody's different, I'm not going to question any manager who wants to put in dummy teams or doesn't want to put in dummy teams.

"But realistically, bar probably Limerick, I think everything gets out of every other dressing room.

“If you look at Nickie Quaid this year, nobody knew what that was coming. So that shows how tight they are.

"And that's probably a challenge for all of us, but from my point of view, look, our training sessions aren't closed door either, really.

“To a degree, we don't want to invite 25,000 people down there. We often get a mother coming up with her two kids looking for autographs and she's sitting on the side of the field.

“As I keep saying, this isn't my team, this is the Cork public's team, this is the players' team more than anything. We try and be as straightforward as we can.

"I don't believe in pulling strokes, to be honest. We'll turn up, we'll man up, we'll go at you and leave the other opposition do the same to us.

“I think it'd be selling a disservice to myself and the selectors and our coach, who's brilliant, Donal O'Rourke, that we can't decide that 45 minutes before the game, they're playing this fella. We haven't done our job...they're bringing in this fella, he's going in centre forward, how is this going to work?

"If we haven't talked all those scenarios out, we're not doing our job properly.

"I think it's dishonest to the players themselves. You can talk about the panel, and you can talk about the strength of it and the belief that you have in everybody else, but if you're pretending that Joe Bloggs is playing before someone so the other lad’s going to think it.

“You have a player going home then and he's telling his mum and dad then, oh, I'm starting, because we can't tell him that Seamus Harnedy's playing before him. So, how's he going to come off the bench then and perform?

“We've never done it, so if I started doing it now, it'd be alien to what we do.”