Cork hopeful of injured duo's return for All-Ireland final

Cork have no new injury worries ahead of Sunday week’s All-Ireland SHC final against Tipperary.

The 20-point semi-final victory over Dublin on Saturday was thankfully free of any new issues arising and manager Pat Ryan is hopeful that the players absent, Cormac O’Brien (quad) and Séamus Harnedy (hamstring), will be available for the decider.

“Everyone was good from Saturday,” he said at the press evening at Páirc Uí Chaoimh.

“Obviously. Séamus Harnedy and Cormac O'Brien weren't eligible. I think Cormac will be perfect, to be honest. He should be back in fully on Wednesday night. Séamus will be touch and go. Hopefully he might be back in next Tuesday. We'll see how it goes.

“Everyone is missing players but obviously missing Séamus is a huge blow to our team.

“It's a huge blow to himself firstly, but we'd be confident that he'll hopefully be able to take some part in it. Our medical staff are working hard on it and Séamus is working hard himself.

“He's putting every day into it and there's a lot of recovery needed for that. What'll happen is if he's right, he's right. If he's not right, we'll go with what we have.

“We have great confidence in the lads we have.”

Having beaten Dublin, Ryan had the luxury of watching the other semi-final on Sunday, with Tipperary beating Kilkenny by a scoreline that was eventually finalised as 4-20 to 0-30, with some confusion as to whether Tipp had an extra point or not.

“It was a great game between two great teams,” he said.

“In fairness, Tipperary showed great heart and determination to come back after Kilkenny stretched ahead of them. They got a couple of great goals. Four goals is huge scoring against Kilkenny.

“Anyone could have won it in the end, to be honest. It was a pity there was a small bit of controversy at the end. For a great game, it just didn't need that.

“I didn't even notice it myself when I was watching the game, my idea was that it was three points they were down.

It's amazing really with all that's going on with technology that something like that can happen. I heard some kind of comment along the lines that the Kilkenny management should have known or been able to get a communication on.

“Unfortunately with the way things are now, even if they did know, you can't get the communication on. That's the problem. It's disappointing. But I think the best team on the day won.”

However, Ryan didn’t necessarily agree with the notion that a three-point deficit should automatically see a team go bald-headed for goals.

"It depends what way the time is,” he said.

“If you look at most teams, if you start tipping away at the points, you'll end up getting an opportunity for a goal. If you go chasing goals, you'll never get them. I think any advice we'd do if we're down is to keep taking your scores and build pressure on the team.

“We saw that perfectly above in Ennis this year when they tipped away with their scores, it put pressure on us and then the momentum changes. All of a sudden they get a goal and you're lucky to hang on and get a draw. That's the key.

“When you go chasing a goal, you'll rarely get it. I think tipping the ball over the bar is the best thing.”