*David Reidy tries to get away from Seán O’Donoghue. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill
CORK’s discipline let them down as they lost out to Brian Lohan’s Clare in the second round of the Munster SHC.
Understandably Cork manager Pat Ryan was “hugely disappointed” with the two point loss his charges suffered to Clare on Sunday. “We were playing a lot of very good hurling, we probably left a few scores behind us in the first half. We knew Clare would come back at us and they did. It was always going to be a nip and tuc game, we are very disappointed we didn’t get over the line”.
Losing Seán O’Donoghue to a second yellow card was a turning point in the contest. “Unfortunately you are not going to win games if you have only 14 men against 15 especially against a top class side. Our discipline probably left us down a bit. We have to look forward now to the Limerick game. We have two games left and we have to win those games. We have backed ourselves into a tight corner”.
On the sending off of the team captain, Ryan stated, “it wasn’t a dirty game. Sean made a very good challenge in the first incident, did he do a third man tackle on the way out?. We have been down to 14 and 13 and I don’t think we are a dirty team. There were too many yellow cards and that’s the way it goes and we have to move on”.
Missed goal opportunities in the opening half were rued by the Cork boss. “We had three or four opportunities for goals in the first half that we should have taken and that would have put us in a good position. In fairness to Clare they got a great first goal, spaces open up when you are playing 14 against 15”.
Disappointment was voiced with the Cork manager on “one thing in this game. We had a man down injured and they got 1-1, you are asked to play away, I don’t think that was very fair, there is player welfare. That was a big turning point in the game”.
Asked about his team’s defending in this tie he said “they were more efficient, we had more opportunities but didn’t take them. We defended very well for a long period. Clare are a very very good side. We hurled manfully”.
“We didn’t win, that’s the bottom line. We were more up for it. We took the game to Clare, last week in Walsh Park we let Waterford dictate the game. We were dictating an awful lot of today’s game but we were up against a quality side. Our discipline left us down a small bit, we conceded too many frees to a top class freetaker in Aidan McCarthy, that was disappointing for us”.
Ryan continued, “we had a fantastic crowd today and I thought the lads represented the Cork jersey way better today than last week. We have Limerick next, we have to get ready to go. It will probably be easier to get them up for that game than it was last week. At the end of the day we are only interested in winning and that didn’t happen”.
Peter Duggan’s influence in the game brought the performance of the Cork defence into question. “Peter Duggan is catching balls for ten years. Tim \O’Mahoney did a good job on him for long periods of the game, he pcked up a yellow card and that made life difficult for him. Duggan is a very good player and he causes problems. We got our puckouts going well in the first half but in the second half they just got a run on us. They got on top and won six or seven balls which brought them back into the game”.
“They are a good team and weren’t going to lie down when seven points down. Our lads chased the game really well, they played well for the jersey. It’s up to us to get the lads up for the next game, they know they were well in the game,” he concluded.
