Pat Ryan delighted to expand dead-ball options

Patrick Horgan replaced the injured Pádraig Power in the first half of Saturday night’s Allianz HL Division 1A clash against Limerick, but, unusually for him, he did not score a free during the match.

Having started on dead-ball duties, Darragh Fitzgibbon stayed on the frees and finished with ten points, nine of them from placed balls, including the late equaliser to earn Cork a point. While Horgan’s status as the primary free-taker is not in jeopardy, manager Pat Ryan is keen to have a suite of available options, with Declan Dalton, Alan Connolly, Shane Kingston and Conor Lehane all capable of stepping up, too.

“Darragh takes them for Charleville,” Ryan said, “Darragh's a brilliant hurler, we all know that. A brilliant stickman, a brilliant striker of the ball.

“Obviously, Hoggy's probably your number-one choice free-taker, but it's great that you have someone like that that can take them. Darragh probably hasn't taken them over the last two years.

“It's vital that, if something did happen to Hoggy during a match or whatever like that, where we have a situation, that Darragh can step in and just put the ball over the bar and, I suppose, not to have to be reliant on any one guy.”

Saturday’s draw, following on from the opening-round win over Wexford, leaves Cork well-placed with three points.

“We're just taking every game as it comes,” Ryan said.

“We're not looking at how many points we need or anything like that. But, look, obviously, we know that Wexford were a little bit depleted last week.

“We knew Limerick were going to come with a really good challenge on Saturday and they did come with a really, really good challenge.

“I think both teams got better and that's where we're looking out of every game as we move forward into the championship.”

That is still a long way off – indeed, Cork have a three-week break before the play again in the league, with Ryan able to give the players some downtime before the clash with Tipperary in Thurles.

“We've built in a bit of a break for the lads as regards that,” Ryan said.

“They're off for a couple of days now to recuperate and, obviously, we've lads away with Fitzgibbon, with MTU and UCC. So we'll see where they go after, after how they get on.

“We'll assess it when we get back. The three Sars fellas are back Thursday night as well, so that'll boost our panel as well.”

Saturday’s game drew a crowd of 23,402 – a figure that would surely have been greater but for the bad weather. While there had been controversy in the lead-up over the

“Look, if the call had been made to move the ball back to six o'clock, the whole place would be giving out, ‘Why weren't we watching Ireland and England?’ so I think it was the right call.

“People got to have an opportunity to go and see the match and spend a few pounds in the hostelries around the place and then come down and see a great game of hurling where two teams were going at it hard.

“At the end of the day, I'd love to have been able to watch Ireland and England in the rugby, but we didn't get a chance, we were preparing for the match.

“From our point of view, look, I think that was the right call made by both by Cork GAA or the GAA in total. Whoever made that call, I think it was the right call.”

Saturday was Limerick’s first game of the campaign – with seven teams in Division 1A, each county sits out a round and they missed the opening set of games.

The draw meant they avoided a third straight defeat to Cork following the two championship matches in 2024 but manager John Kiely denied that that brought any extra motivation.

“That’s an outside perception, if you like – within both camps, I’m sure,” he said.

“Everyone’s just very focused on the game that’s coming up, the performance, getting it right. If you’re thinking about what happened last year, or the last day, your mind is in the wrong place.

“I think that everybody was very focused on tonight and maximising their opportunity. You had a lot of players that were getting their opportunity – there were a lot of changes from the last time we met – so it was a good chance for lads to get game-time under their belts and they didn’t do too badly at all.

“A lot of fellas will see that they’ve plenty to work off to say, ‘That’s not a bad start, let’s go again next week.’”