Ben O'Connor: Cork want to win Munster but main thing is getting out

In the Munster SHC round-robin era, it has become the last question of the pre-championship press conference with a manager – would you take third place if offered it now?

During his three years as Cork boss, Pat Ryan’s answer was always a hard yes; in 2024, his team came agonisingly close to winning the All-Ireland after scraping out of the province and taking the circuitous route.

In 2025, Ryan’s answer was the same beforehand, though the Munster championship ended with Cork ending Limerick’s run of six straight titles.

Since succeeding his former team-mate, Ben O’Connor has been bullish about wanting to win every game his team plays, and therefore every competition they enter.

To that end, while he’ll accept third if that’s how the cards fall, he wouldn’t take it right now.

“No, I want to win it,” he says.

“I want to win Munster, I want to finish top, but it is about getting out. I would take third place but I want to win it. If we can't win it, third place will do.

“That's the way it is. There's no point in saying I don't want to win it. All the other fellas, Limerick, Tipp, they all want to win it. There's no point in saying we don't.

We want to win it, but the main thing is getting out.”

The bookmakers have Cork as second favourites for Munster behind a Limerick team that beat them by six points in the Allianz Hurling League final a fortnight ago.

Cork’s performance that day was short of what they can do and plenty debate since has surrounded that but O’Connor found it less worrying on the watch-back.

“I suppose, obviously, on the day of the game it's different,” he says.

You're tied up in it and you're looking in from the sideline. When you see it on the television afterwards, you pick out a few bits and pieces.

“The pleasing aspect about it was that after ten minutes, we weren't in a good place and we fought hard and got back into it. I suppose we got a lucky goal that helped us too but I thought we finished the half strong. Half-time maybe even came at a poor time for us.

“After half-time again, we got a couple of scores but we kind of slackened off a small bit. At the end of the day, we were beaten by three points in both halves. Look, it was probably better after watching it on television than walking out of the stadium on the day.

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“I thought the performances were a little bit better, but it also just showed the work that we have to do. We have the last three All-Ireland champions in Munster so the main thing that we're looking for at this stage is to get out as one, two or three.

Obviously, it's nice to be winning, but getting out of Munster is the first thing on the mind now."

And it’s a challenge that the Newtownshandrum man is relishing.

"Oh, I can't wait,” he says.

“Look, I enjoyed the league. We made no excuses, we said at the start of the year that we wanted to try and win the league. We didn't do that and now there's a line drawn under it.

“The boys had a recovery session, there was a chat about it, and that's that done.

“We're looking on now. We hope the weather will pick up a small bit – sunny weather, a day out in Thurles, can't wait for it.”