Niall O'Leary: Win over Tipperary showed Cork's improving consistency
Cork's Niall O'Leary challenges Jake Morris of Tipperary in last month's Munster SHC game at FBD Semple Stadium in Thurles. Picture: Daire Brennan/Sportsfile
CORK hurler Niall O’Leary feels that the team’s performance in beating Tipperary to qualify from the Munster SHC underlined a growing consistency.
Having beaten Limerick in a pulsating game the week before when needing to win to keep their season alive, Cork went to Thurles eight days later facing a Tipp side that were in a similar predicament.
In previous years, Cork have not always been able to follow one good performance with another but a 4-30 to 1-21 triumph marked the county’s biggest championship win over Tipp since 1898.
“I think that was even better again, to be able to back it up,” he says.
“Consistency was the big thing with us over the last few years – whether it was consistency over the whole 70 minutes of a game or consistency from one game to another. It was a huge thing that we were really going for this year and I think the Tipp game really proved that.”
Next up for Cork is an All-Ireland SHC preliminary quarter-final on Saturday week against the winners of tomorrow’s Joe McDonagh Cup final between Laois and Offaly.
From a position where defeats to Waterford and Clare left them on the precipice of an early elimination for the second straight year, the graph has turned upwards.
As disappointing as the Clare loss was, there was an asterisk in that Cork led for much of it but then played the last 20 minutes with 14 players after captain Seán O’Donoghue was sent off.
“The Clare game, I know we lost but there were huge positives to take,” says O’Leary, a brand ambassador for Syngergy Credit Union’s ‘Any Loan, Any Time’ campaign.
“We came together and said, ‘We’re either in it now or we’re not, we don’t win and we’re out.’ “We said that we were really going to go for it, that we were either all in or not doing it at all. Our backs were to the wall but I think the performance takes care of itself when fellas are working hard and working for each other.
"The scenes after the Limerick game were amazing.
That 3-28 to 3-26 win over Limerick, capped with Patrick Horgan’s late goal from a penalty, was Cork’s first win over the Shannonsiders since a 2009 round-robin victory at the Gaelic Grounds.
It was as tough as Cork could have wished for in terms of games needing to be won to keep a season alive, but the mood within the camp was not one of fear.
“For any of us on the panel, you have to go in with a philosophy that you’re there and you’re good enough to beat any team,” O’Leary says.
“There’s no point playing if you’re not going to have that belief in yourself. It didn’t change for that game – we just took it like any other game, really.
“We went there with the belief that we were going to win and we had our few things in place, that we knew if we ticked those boxes then we’d have a great chance of beating them.
“Things went to plan on the day and Hoggy stood up and put the ball in the back of the net when we needed it!
“It was like any other game – we went in there with the belief that we were going to win and the performance looked after itself, then.”
Having been a substitute for the opening game against Waterford, O’Leary regained the number 2 jersey for the Clare match and has impressed in the three games since.
A year ago, the Castlelyons man captained the team in the injury-enforced absence of O’Donoghue but he knows that, with competition for places so strong, nobody is guaranteed a spot.
It can be tough on those missing out but, ultimately, it is of greater collective benefit.
“I think Pat always says it, the depth we have in the panel is off the charts, really,” he says.
“You have to bide your time, really, and hope to God that you might get in. When you do get in, you look after your performance and hopefully play well for the team and keep your position, then.”
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