Cork v Limerick: Pat Ryan seeking to maximise home comforts

While it is still ‘only’ the league, a clash with Limerick will provide as good a test as Cork could wish for this year in the year.

Even if January has been seen off and the calendar now shows February, tonight’s clash at SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh (7.30pm – and live-streamed by TG4, just in case you hadn’t been attention) will still be more of the winter-hurling variety. But that in itself is no bad thing, because Cork can be assured of a physical battle against the Shannonsiders.

John Kiely’s side are playing their first competitive game of the year – with seven teams in the top flight this year, each county misses out a round of fixtures – and so will be keen to get up to speed quickly.

Having beaten Wexford last week, Cork have two points on the board and another win would go a long way towards securing a Division 1A spot for next year, but manager Pat Ryan isn’t thinking that way.

“Everybody knows what a great team Limerick are and the history that they’ve created over the last number of years,” he says.

“From our point of view, it’s another two points on offer. You want to win your home games – if you can your three home matches, six points will probably keep you safe for next year, but I’m not really looking at safety or anything like that, relegation doesn’t really enter our heads.

“We make no bones about it – obviously, we’re trying to prepare the team and find new players in different positions and strengthen our panel as we go into the championship, but the further you can go in the league and the more games you win, the better your confidence is.

“It just shows with the teams that have won the All-Irelands over the last ten years or so, they’ve all been winning leagues. We’re very conscious of that.
“We’re very lucky at the moment, touch wood – we don’t have any serious injuries at the moment, just a couple of niggles that fellas are coming back from.

“The last couple of years, we’ve had three or four fellas that have been out until mid-March and that has been tough to deal with in terms of trying to get them back into it.

“Robbie O’Flynn is probably the only fella – he was away until January 11, so he just needs that bit of time to come back into it. Conor Lehane, obviously, had his wedding and honeymoon, so he’s progressing back into it nicely.

“They’re guys that’ll be really in contention for the three games in a row against Tipperary, Kilkenny and Clare. Obviously, there’ll be a nice bit of squad rotation in those games.”

With 15 points to spare over an under-strength Wexford, Cork had a lot of positives to take home from the Model County. Equally, though, Ryan is keen to see another increase in the quality of the performance.

“With the weather, like lots of other teams, we probably hadn’t played a lot of games,” he says.

“I think that that kind of ring-rustiness showed in the first 15 or 20 minutes, especially. In fairness to Wexford, they brought fierce fight and intensity – obviously, as everyone knows, they’ve had a couple of retirements, on top of some of the marquee players missing, but they fought fierce heard in the early stages, against the wind.

“It took us a while to get into our flow and we probably wasted a bit of ball and stuff like that. I thought that there were some very good passages of play in us but we definitely needed that game to hopefully bring us on another bit.”