Ben O'Connor keen to balance Cork hurlers' workload as busy time looms

While the result didn’t go Cork’s way in the Mardyke as Ben O’Connor made his managerial bow, he felt it was worthwhile as a first outing.

“It's just to get fellas to run around and draw a nice crowd in,” he said after a 2-18 to 2-17 loss to UCC, “get fellas playing in front of the crowd, get used to the surroundings.

“It would have been nice to win this as well, but I think that's what it's all about today, seeing fellas in action.

“We've been training hard but it’s all strength and conditioning at the moment. We're just delighted that now that we're coming into the new year, we're going to start doing a bit more hurling, a lot more ball-work.

“There's lots of the running side of it done now, so it's only down to getting the game plan and getting the hurling better.”

And were there positives for O’Connor and his management team?

“We won't be picking out the good stuff at all!” he laughed. “It’s the bad stuff we’ll be looking at when we go through it in the video after.

“But yeah, there's a good few fellas there now that were impressive today, so it’s only onwards and upwards from here.”

Of course, there was a dual benefit in that quite a few of the UCC team are also part of the Cork set-up.

“We had a good few playing with UCC,” O’Connor said, “so we got to look at more than the 18 we used ourselves, we got to look at 25 or 26.

“Their competition will be starting now in two weeks and they'll be playing a good standard of hurling in that and that will help us as well.”

UCC will open their Fitzgibbon Cup campaign on Thursday, January 8 against MTU Cork and O’Connor is aware of the need to balance workloads.

“You can't be flah-ing the lads,” he said, “if they're playing on a Wednesday night, they can't train on Tuesday night, they can't train on Thursday night.

“We’d be all about the players and Ian [Jones] and Cathal [O’Brien] in the strength and conditioning, they'll be looking at all the figures and things.

“We'll be looking after the players. 

There's no point flogging them this time of year if they're not going to be fit for when we want them in the championship.”

SLOG

“It's only the base-work now, it's pure slog this time of year, but you learn a lot about fellas in that too.

“From now on, the evenings will be getting a little bit longer. The league will be starting on January 25, so that’s what we’re building up to.”

The night before the all-Cork college clash, the Rebels have their Co-op SuperStores Munster Hurling League opener against Limerick. O’Connor does at least have the benefit of not having many injuries to worry about.

“The biggest thing at the moment is sickness,” he said.

There's a bug going around the country, so we've got a good few fellas out sick.

“Timmy got a bad cut on his finger last week, Robbie O’Flynn is out with a small bit of a knock, but, other than that, touch wood, we've most of the fellas in contention now again.

“Wednesday week now down in the Gaelic Grounds, we're looking forward to that. It’s just another day that the boys can put their hand up and say, ‘I should be involved in the panel here for the rest of the year.

“We've a good few bodies in at the moment – that has to be cut, unfortunately, in the middle of January, so that's what these games are for.”