Cork v Waterford: New boys shine but bigger tests lie ahead

Ben O’Connor’s last match as Cork U20 manage was the 2024 Munster final against Tipperary, when Darragh McCarthy’s late winner ended hopes of back-to-back Cork titles.

Of course, the major talking point from that encounter at TUS Gaelic Grounds was the ‘ghost goal’ not awarded to Cork – the would-be scorer of that chance was William Buckley.

The St Finbarr’s man was the sole league debutant in the Cork starting 15 against Waterford at SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh and he can certainly be said to have hit the ground running.

A tally of 1-4, all from play, underlined his credentials but the scoreboard journalism only tells part of the story of his all-round display.

His second-half goal exemplified the kind of inter-play that O’Connor wants to see – and it also involved another debutant – Alan Walsh of Kanturk, who had come off the bench. He worked hard to stop Waterford coming out of defence and the ball fell kindly for Alan Connolly, who had Buckley on his shoulder.

Hugh O’Connor of Newmarket – better known as a footballer at under-age but drafted into the U20 hurling set-up by Ben – also came on and had an impact, marking his debut with a score.

In defence, Dáire O’Leary did well at full-back on Seán Walsh prior to being replaced late on by Eoin Roche. While he wasn’t technically a newcomer as he featured up as far as the 2022 league semi-final win over Kilkenny, when an injury halted his progress, the Watergrasshill man was not part of the set-up last year but has done well to earn a recall and will be seen again.

A lot of players were auditioned during the Co-op SuperStores Munster Hurling League, with few of the more established names seen – though it wasn’t necessarily a case of keeping them in cold storage so that they’d be hungry when unleashed.

“I had no say in that,” O’Connor said, “that was [strength and conditioning coach] Ian Jones.

“The two Munster League games were of a Wednesday and Monday night, so they are not

training nights.

“That means if they played on any of them nights, they couldn't have trained. So that's the way them matches were. Two nights training is better than one match in the Munster league for those fellas.

“Plus, we wanted to give fellas that had been training all along, we wanted to give them a game, and wearing the red jersey in a competitive game. So we got exactly what we wanted out of in the two games as well. But that's the reason behind the other fellas.”

That so few of the newcomers made the cut when the initial 47-man group was whittled down to 36 for the league shows on the one hand how strong a squad Cork have – and the fact that wholesale changes are not required to a team that did win two trophies last year – but also that those making the cut have had to prove themselves worthy of it.

Working their way into the championship 26 or 15 is another step again, but Sunday showed bright starts in that regard.