How one graph helped Cork hurlers bounce back from Limerick defeat

Cork hurling management reveals why they scrapped video reviews after the Limerick loss and how a single graph refocused the team

Brendan Coleman described Cork hurling manager Pat Ryan as "a great people person". Pic: Jim Coughlan.

Between the Limerick round-robin performance being so bad and the following game against Waterford being so soon, the Cork hurlers didn’t even bother with the standard practice of a video analysis review following the events of May 18 in the Gaelic Grounds.

Instead of subjecting themselves to the horror movie that was that particular video tape, Pat Ryan and his management decided to simply present the players with the tale of the tape: a graph illustrating the number of turnovers and tackles they made against Limerick in their two victories over them in 2024 in comparison to how few they made in the process of being blown out by 16 points playing them for the first time in championship in 2025.

“[That defeat] really hurt us,” says Brendan Coleman who has been part of Ryan’s management team since the Sarsfields man took over the county’s U21s back in the autumn of 2019. “It was an outlier, but it still hurt us.

“We had seven days to turn it around. Waterford were coming and they had nothing to lose. So we didn’t forensically go through it.

“That was a great thing about Pat. We left Limerick and Pat knew what we had to do. We didn’t go wide. We went quite narrow.” 

So, when the group reassembled in Páirc Uí Chaoimh on the Monday after the Sunday before for their customary gym session, this time they dispensed with the subsequent standard video review.

“There was a simple graph put up and it told the story in terms of turnovers. There’s a number of things we look at it, such as around the puckout. And in terms of turnovers, that was down for us in that Limerick game. It was clear we weren’t at it.” 

By ‘we’, Coleman meant more than the players. Ryan’s management felt they had failed to get the players to the required pitch of the game.

Over the course of convincingly winning the league and getting a result in their opening two championship games, the longest layoff Cork had was just a fortnight. Leading into the Limerick game they were off for three weeks. The performance indicated they hadn’t managed that gap right.

“There was a sense around the management that we left the players down in terms of not navigating that three weeks properly. But it’s a case of if you lose, you learn, so we learned a huge lesson in that.” The proof of that was in their All Ireland semi-final performance.

After absorbing the lesson of that statistical graph shown to them on May 19, Cork upped their tackle count and performance levels to prevail over both Waterford and then, in the Munster final, Limerick, Cork’s dubious reward was a four-week gap ahead of their next game.

For a county that had lost their previous three All-Ireland semi-finals following a similar layoff, and a team that seemed to play its best hurling playing either week on week or every second week, it presented quite the challenge. They embraced it and overcame it.

“Again, we referenced May 18 and how bad it was. There were definite learnings in that three-week gap in terms of what we could do better. And we took them on.

“Week one after the Munster final was low key. You could see the significant effect it [the match] had on their energy levels. So we kind of came down for a week. We went back in for a gym session and some guys were released to play in club games that were on that week.

“So we had reduced numbers, and with them there was very little contact, just skills work, short and snappy, just with the aim of getting bodies right for the following week with a full panel.

“Then we went hammer and tongs for three weeks. And those three weeks were excellent. So [how the team came out against Dublin], we were expecting it.” 

The defeat to Limerick was an outlier in several other respects. Not only do the team usually analyse a game back; this year, the players, rather than Ryan or his selectors like Coleman, lead such reviews. Often management aren’t even in the room when it happens.

“They run their own players meetings with just Tomás Manning from the stats group [in there with them]. We’re not privy to all that goes on in there but they are really driving it and they’re doing well out of it.

“It wouldn’t be every night, just the odd night, that they’d have those analysis sessions or a players' meeting, but we give them that space which is fantastic.” Again it was an action point taken from last season to further aid as well as reflect the development of a maturing group but for Coleman it’s also a reflection of both Ryan’s personality and philosophy.

“He’s just a great people person. First and foremost his knowledge of the game, his acumen for hurling, is so vast. But he can talk hurling, he can talk American sports, he can talk politics. And he has such a great relationship with the lads and is so selfless to allow them to grow and develop. He takes great pride in that which is a lovely trait to have.

“And all of us in the backroom, whether that’s [selectors] Donal [O’Mahony], Wayne [Sherlock], Fergal [Condon] or Donal O’Rourke or myself, we’re just trying to take as much work as we can off him. We’re all there for the one purpose which is to try and let these fellas grow.”