Pat Ryan says Cork's destiny is in their own hands when they face Clare and Limerick

While Cork may have failed to win at home, the circumstances in which they earned a draw meant that manager Pat Ryan was looking at the result as more a point gained than one lost.

Cork and Tipperary sit level on top of the Munster SHC table with three points from two games while Clare and Limerick have two each and Waterford are yet to register. The key takeaway for Ryan was that Cork still in charge of their own destiny.
“It feels like a point gained, I suppose,” he said.

“We’ve three points now, it’s in our own hands now whether we can get out of it. If we can get a positive result in Clare in two weeks’ time, we’ll be getting out of Munster then at that stage, I assume.

“It was a rip-roaring contest, in fairness. We probably would have taken a draw with ten, 15 minutes to go and we came back level and they got a great goal and our fellas showed great heart to come back and get another goal. It’s a positive for us but lots to work on as well.”

Five points down on more than on one occasion, it would have been somewhat understandable if Cork became more frantic in the search for a way back into the game. What was pleasing in terms of the second-half goals from Darragh Fitzgibbon and Brian Hayes was how Cork showed patience to work the ball.

Such familiarity in terms of building moves doesn’t happen overnight.

“We’re doing a small bit of that stuff,” Ryan said, but credit to the managers that were there before us, a lot of the lads have been involved with Kieran’s [Kingston] group the last couple of years and they did an awful lot of that stuff, off the shoulder and stuff like that, so lads are able to play that way.

“From our point of view, all the games we played this year, whether it was in the league or the Munster league or anything, we’ve been always going well at the end so our fitness levels are very high and the lads coming onto the pitch have been great and the attitude has been first class from our fellas. 

They didn’t give up again today.

“There was lots of things, even in league matches during the year or Munster league matches where we were behind by seven, eight points and fellas just kept coming and kept coming and we knew we’d keep coming. It was good to get there in the end and maybe a bit unlucky that Deccie’s [Dalton] shot didn’t go between the two posts.”

The fact that 1-5 of Cork’s tally came from the bench was also pleasing for Ryan and the management.

“It’s very hard to pick our team at the moment,” he said.

“Brian [Hayes] is a new fella into the senior squad, he’s been going well for us, has been a small bit injured. He got an opportunity today and he took it.

“He won two or three good balls when he came in and that’s what you’re asking fellas to do, make a contribution when they come on, and he did that. That gets him up our squad and gives him a chance to get more game-time, whether it’s starting or getting a bigger impact off the bench.”

However, Ryan knows that Cork were second-best for parts of the encounter and those areas must be looked at.

“We got a great start,” he said, “we could have got another two or three goals, really, would have built on it.

“But, look, I think there were a couple of balls we wouldn’t have been happy with when fellas didn’t take the ball on a bit more and ran into the grass.

“When you don’t take those opportunities against teams like Tipperary, they’re going to get their joys and they won a couple of frees around the middle and got a couple of good scores.

I thought Noel McGrath was very good; it was hard to get our hands on him. He’s a top-class player and it’s not his first time causing problems.”

BLOW

Unfortunately for Cork, Robbie O’Flynn had to come off just after his goal and he is unlikely to feature against Clare.

“It’s a hamstring injury,” Ryan said.

“We’ll have to get it assessed. He’ll be out for two or three weeks anyway at the very least. A bit disappointed for Robbie, first full game back, maybe it was a chance starting him but we just felt that we needed his impact and give him an opportunity to start as well.

“We’re disappointed for him. In fairness, he got a fantastic goal for us. We’ll see where he is over the next couple of days.”