Cork v Tipperary: Pat Ryan always keen to improve 'work in progress'
Cork manager Pat Ryan watches Patrick Horgan strike a free during last year's All-Ireland SHC final against Clare at Croke Park. Picture: Eddie O'Hare
Almost 52 weeks ago, the Liam MacCarthy Cup went to Clare while Cork’s wait for an All-Ireland hurling title moved into a 20th year.
The starting point of any analysis is usually to look at what the winners did well and what the losers could have done better – but, when just a point separates two teams after 90 minutes of hurling, ripping it up and starting again is probably not the best option.
That said, Cork manager Pat Ryan was willing to look at all aspects of the team and management in a bid to find the extra gains.
“There's nothing really specific,” he says, “it's more, how are we interacting more? What are we doing on our gameplan? Are we more focused?
“I think myself being more focused was probably… the end of the day, you meet the management team, but you look at yourself first and see what you're doing and I think me being more focused on the playing side of it, all the stuff that was happening on the pitch, really focusing on that.
“Sometimes you can get carried away with the logistics side of it and I have a brilliant fella who looks after all our logistics, Dave Nolan, but you get carried away with making sure that the food is right, the gear is right, and travel is right, and how our pitches are right and all that side of it.
“But, look, I think me being more focused and how we can deliver that better and my interactions with players, you know. I got plenty of feedback off the players. I met the players one-to-one and I got plenty of feedback off the players.
"I think a lot of the players who would have come to me and said, ‘Maybe you just need to be a bit more honest sometimes with us and just tell us what we need to do exactly.’
“Sometimes, you might be, for the want of a better word, pussy-footing around the situation but it was being a bit more direct and I think that is something that I've done this year. It's something I probably need to get better at all the time.
“It's something that's a work in progress.”
Having the self-awareness to evaluate your own role is one thing, but putting the structures in place to best serve you and the team is just as important.
“I suppose sometimes it's realising that you are the top man and that you are the front man,” Ryan says.
“I’ve mentioned it before, I was probably managing instead of leading. We have Gary Keegan involved with us and Gary would speak an awful lot of that with me, that you need to lead maybe a bit more, instead of maybe managing the situations a bit more.
“It's not taking over or anything like that, it's just that you're giving the direction clearer to people and you're giving the direction of what we want to do and the standards and the expectations of everybody is clearer and then fellas just go and do their jobs, whatever their role is within our group.
"And when the players are believing in you as a management team and understand that you're doing the right things and that you can get them to where they want to get to, what their dreams and what their expectations are, that gave us a bigger footing again in 2025 to go on and expand our game plan and expand the way we wanted to do things.
“We set up a leadership group and that has worked really, really well this year. The lads that have come into it have been brilliant. We've probably become, from 2023 to 2024 it was better, to 2025, it's even better. We're much more player-led in what we're doing, how we play, how we analyse matches, how we come back at it.
“We've a fantastic analysis and video group led by Tomás Manning that really, really go after a lot of the things that we want to do. And we've dialled it down a bit as well.
“The 20-minute video sessions are gone; it's five, six, seven minutes regularly, just to get fellas tuned in and that seems to be working as well.
“But it's working at the moment, it's going well, but the proof is in the pudding on Sunday."
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