All-Ireland final: No point dwelling on marginal calls by officials, says Pat Ryan

Cork manager Pat Ryan refused to take issue with marginal calls that went against the Rebels in Sunday’s All-Ireland final defeat to Clare and instead expressed pride in how well his team battled.

At the end of extra time, the teams were separated by a single point, Clare’s 3-29 just edging Cork’s 1-34. The last play of the game saw Cork sub Robbie O’Flynn claim a long free by goalkeeper Patrick Collins and fire just wide, though he did look to be illegally impeded as he did so.

“Somebody said that to me – to be honest, I didn’t see it,” Ryan said.

“We can’t do anything about it now. We just have to move on and see where we go.”

Equally, he didn’t wish to re-litigate the decision not to award a 65 after Clare full-back Conor Cleary got in an excellent block on a Séamus Harnedy goal attempt.

The sides were level at that stage with Cork having momentum after two points had brought them to 1-17 against Clare’s 2-14 but, after the wide ball, Clare moved back in front through David Reidy before Tony Kelly produced a goal for the ages.

Cork didn’t lead in the rest of normal time but Ryan was not dwelling on the call of the umpires or referee Johnny Murphy.

“From where I was, back on the opposite 45, it looked like it,” he said.

“I don’t know, to be honest. I don’t think that that affected it – obviously, there are a couple of decisions that go your way and don’t go your way.

“At the end of the day, Clare are the champions and we won’t be giving out about any of that stuff.”

As to whether a narrow defeat was somewhat easier to take, Ryan felt it showed just how hard his team battled.

“I suppose that, sometimes, you’d say no,” he said, “but, from our point of view, our job was to represent the county, represent the jersey, represent the people who came up here, paying hard money to come up to Dublin and I think the lads did that.

“The lads can be very proud of how they performed, but, at the same time, we came up here to win and we didn’t.

“We’ll lick our wounds and congratulate Clare. They’ll have a great couple of days and we’ll have a sad couple of days and fellas will go back to their clubs. We’ll regroup and see where that takes us.”

One area likely to come in for heavy review is the turnaround in the latter part of the first half, when Cork’s seven-point lead was evaporated as Clare improved.

“To be honest, we allowed too many short puckouts,” he said.

“They were able to work the ball put and we lost our shape inside in the full-forward line, trying to tackle from behind.

“We just gave them too many short puckouts in the first half and they worked the ball out very well. I think their stats were very good on that, the stats on their long puckouts probably weren’t as good in the first half.

“We just gave them too many short puckouts and we lost our shape and they got back into it. But, look, there were loads of ebbs and flows in the game over the periods of time. They did a lot of good things that troubled us; we troubled them as well but we’re obviously disappointed.”

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