Cork minor boss Keith Ricken: 'I had a dream we were going to win by three points'

Cork are All-Ireland minor football champions for the first time in seven years

Cork minor football manager Keith Ricken. Pic: Bryan Keane

Keith Ricken had seen this before. The Cork minor manager had been at the helm of teams that won county titles, a Sigerson Cup and, in 2019, an All-Ireland U20 title for the county.

He has known big days, finals days, but that’s not what we’re on about here.

No, he had actually seen this game before. Lived it.

“I knew that this game would go down to the wire. I actually played this game twice,” he said after his side’s three-point comeback win over Tyrone. 

“I had a dream we were going to win by three points coming down the home straight. I kid you not. I woke up in a bag of sweat. This is my second time playing it in a week. I’m not going to watch it again.

“Tyrone were All-Ireland champions and you can see why, their production line, their U20s. I know all the Tyrone lads, we’re trying to model ourselves on them. They gave us a lesson last year [in the quarter-final]. You can see what they’re doing right and we’re trying to emulate that. I’m just glad it came off today.” 

It wasn’t just that Cork won by three points in that dream. 

They had won by overturning a Tyrone lead as well so maybe that was in his mind as a source of comfort when his lads returned to the dressing-room at half-time seven points behind.

That gap had already stretched out to nine at one point, and it would return to that margin early in the second-half, but Ricken had urged his team to keep plugging away, to get that point or find that second wind that could turn things in their favour.

“They tore into it and if that game went on longer they could have won by even more.” 

He had detected a flatness in his players earlier that left them playing catch-up. This wasn’t his first All-Ireland final but it was for every teenager in a red jersey and that slow start made the manner of this one all the more pleasing.

By the end, Ricken felt they were playing as freely as if they were going through their paces in a training session back home. They embraced the occasion and the game and what both demanded of them and got past a superb Tyrone side in the process.

“There were moments there, we turned over a few kickouts. Éanna [Lynch] got a couple of superb blocks. When I saw that second block – we were seven points down I think - I said to the boys: ‘lads, I think we’re in’. That was the catalyst. His blocking gives people hope and energy.

“Rory Twohig inside in goal was superb. His kick-outs, his saves, which is predominantly what he is there for, he didn’t buckle and it didn’t faze him when a kick went wrong. He went back in. We’d chatted about that: kicks can go wrong, but your basics must be right.

“I was delighted to see Gabriel [Oronsaye] coming back onto the pitch. Conor Downing, struggling in the first-half, but dug deep, as any Beara man would, in the second-half. He dug into a recess I don’t think anyone else has, to drag something out. He finished superbly.

“The boys up front: I think Alex [O’Herlihy] got a goal but I don’t know with all the excitement and lads jumping in front of me. Our subs made a great difference. Great belief in themselves. The whole team were united.”

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