Cork's new blood have stepped up to the plate as Rebels look to kick on in championship

In the recent history of the Cork senior footballers, you could argue that this year's league campaign was always going to be the most challenging. 

Last September, manager John Cleary went on record to say that promotion out of the Allianz Division 2 Football League was the objective. 

In the end, the Rebels fell just short, finishing in fifth with eight points. But as it turned out, had they not thrown away a 10-point lead in the one-point loss to Down in the second game, a return to Division 1 for the first time since 2016 would have been achieved.

But, what Cork had to endure during the league was not ideal. Injuries to more than 10 players including six backs and that’s before you mention the eight lads who departed in the off season due to retirement, taking a break and so on.

It gave other players a chance and the Rebels should reap the benefits from it moving forward. They should have a stronger panel going into this championship campaign than the last one. 

The likes of Seán Brady, Neil Lordan, Seán Walsh and Seán McDonnell have all stepped up. Cathail O’Mahony is pretty much like a newcomer after being dogged by injuries in recent years. He's flying it at the moment. 

Cork selector Micheál Ó Cróinín has full belief in the current crop of Rebel footballers ahead of the Munster championship quarter-final clash with Limerick on Saturday at the TUS Gaelic Grounds (6pm).

“The players are very passionate and unbelievably hungry,” the Naomh Abán clubman says.

“In Cork, you have hurling and football. You lose players to one or the other. Should Cork football be doing better overall? You could say yes, but there are challenges everywhere. Then you look at Louth and Cavan and what they're getting out in terms of what they're putting in.

“There’s always transition in any county team. There’s always players that come and go. There needs to be players that come and go because you need freshness and so on. The likes of John O’Rourke for example, he owes nothing to Cork football. He gave 15 years of dedication and the same with Killian O’Hanlon. They owe nothing to Cork football and it’s the case of next man up.

“That’s the way we have always looked at it and the next men are now hopefully starting to get into it and making us stronger. The players want to put Cork football in a stronger place for the coming years.” 

Reflecting on Cork's fifth-place finish in Division 2, with their tally of eight points the highest in the top two tiers since 2015, Ó Cróinín described the spring as a “mixed bag”.

“The Down game [where Cork failed to protect a 10-point lead], you felt afterwards that might be the game that will catch us. A game we definitely felt we should have won. You just felt in Newry that day you were going to pay for that.

“In fairness to the lads, they really stood up in the last two games and we finished with a nice bit of momentum. They are a really diligent group. A lot of talk in pre-season and during the league about the players that we had lost, but I didn’t see much commentary about the amount of players that we brought through. 

"Division 2 is a tough testing ground for new lads. We didn’t have the luxury of balancing our team out in the league. We needed results towards the end. Players were thrown in the deep end and stood up. We feel that we are in a good spot going into the championship.”