Cork v Clare: Result will determine if changes were radical or rash

SPEAKING to The Echo earlier in the week, Cork manager Pat Ryan finished by summing up the state of play after last Sunday’s defeat to Waterford and before the visit of Clare tomorrow.

“After the game, you had two teams on two points each,” he says, “and three on zero points, though I know Tipperary haven’t played.

“It’s up to yourself after that in terms of where you go from here. Your home games are so key, you have to win them – winning away in the Munster championship is hard and that’s been the case with a while.

“Our home games are our key games. We’ve two coming up now, there’ll be packed crowds there and we need to get the Cork public behind us and give them something to shout for.”

Like a scorecard in golf, the bare figures can mask further context. That par at the toughest hole could feature a miracle chip in when a double-bogey looked more likely or the triple at a par 3 could be down to two, or even three, careless putts before getting the ball in the can.

As Ryan acknowledged, Tipperary’s zero points still represent a 100 percent record, though of course there is every chance that the reigning Munster and All-Ireland champions Limerick will blot the Premier County’s copybook tomorrow.

That the Shannonsiders could well be sitting pretty with four points from four by teatime on Sunday did not look a likely prospect when they fell seven points behind Clare with 20 minutes left at Cusack Park in Ennis last Sunday.

CONSISTENT

You have to go back to the last game of the 2018 round-robin – and a defeat to Clare, before they started collecting All-Irelands – for the last time before Sunday that Limerick raised just 15 white flags in a championship match. However, a team that does not have goals as its currency managed to find them when needed, albeit somewhat controversially.

Victory left them exhilarated and, equally, will surely have dented the confidence of a Clare side that set the tone for so much of the game. How they react in SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh will obviously be as big a factor in determining the game as how the much-changed Cork side fares.

An opening-day defeat can lead to all manner of strong reactions (or over-reactions) but it’s worth remembering that Cork lost their first games in the round-robins of 2019 and 2022 and qualified on both occasions, even when the 2022 loss to Limerick was followed by one against Clare.

Since the change in system in 2018, there have been 12 qualifiers from Munster and six of those have lost their first match - Clare in 2018, Cork and Limerick in 2019, Cork in 2022 and Clare and Limerick in 2023.

Of course, last year Cork started with a win at home to Waterford but failed to emerge from the group – in contrast, Clare bounced back from conceding five goals at home to Tipperary by going to TUS Gaelic Grounds in Limerick the following Saturday night and coming away with victory. They went on to finish top of the table after each county had played four matches.

While we’re still conditioned to think in the knockout mindset, a four-game mini-league is just that. 

In the four editions of the round-robin format before this year, only one side – Tipperary in 2019 – have managed to win four from four but even that counted for little as Limerick (two wins and two losses) beat them in the Munster final.

DRASTIC

A total of six changes from Waterford – Niall O’Leary, Eoin Downey, Tim O’Mahony, Ethan Twomey, Declan Dalton and Brian Hayes for Ger Millerick, Damien Cahalane, Mark Coleman, Tommy O’Connell, Seán Twomey and Conor Lehane – will be welcomed in some quarters and seen as too drastic in others.

If Cork are to win, more goal chances are an imperative and the additions of Twomey, Dalton and Hayes will be geared towards that.

Is it refreshing ruthlessness or abandoning the plan in place since the start of the year? The true answer is that there’s a lot of nuance involved and judgement calls, some based on how Clare might be expected to line out – but, such is the nature of these things that the binary answer will be decided by the figures displayed on the scoreboard at around 3.40pm tomorrow.

Win and things are back on track; lose again and there is a two-week break before the toughest of season-saving missions, against Limerick.