Cork captain Darragh Fitzgibbon delighted to have met objective

Cork captain Darragh Fitzgibbon revealed that the team had targeted two victories from their two opening games in the Munster SHC – now they will regroup and refocus before playing Waterford and Clare.

Having edged Limerick by two points, Fitzgibbon paid tribute to the Shannonsiders and the effort required in beating them.

“It was just a game of nip-and-tuck, really, between the two of us,” he told RTÉ Sport, “there’s nothing between us any day we go out.

“You just have to give them so much credit – to have won so much and to keep coming back, to go down a man and keep coming back and going for goal.

“They’re phenomenal, it just takes everything out of you every week – thank God we have a bit of a break now for Waterford.

It’s just unbelievable here, these are the best days of our lives.”

Coupled with the win over Tipperary last week, it means Cork are in a strong position.

“I think we’ve kind of figured out that we can play any way,” Fitzgibbon said.

“We set ourselves a big target at the start of the year that we were going to get four points – we hadn’t done it in the first two games in the round-robin since it came in in 2018.

“That’s an objective we’ve done now; I think we’re going to enjoy tonight and we’ll regroup for Waterford and for Clare then after that.”

Meanwhile, Limerick manager John Kiely was sanguine about the Cian Lynch red card.

While he hadn’t witnessed the incident in which the Shannonsiders’ skipper had become involved with Cork’s Tim O’Mahony, he preferred not to dwell on it or Lynch’s absence for next week’s trip to face Clare.

“I didn't [see it],” he said, “I was watching the ball over on the near side of the field.

“But it is what it is, he got straight red and that's it. There’s no point in crying over spilt milk now it's done. It's the next man up.”

Despite the loss, Kiely felt that there were a lot of positives to take from the Treatymen’s point of view.

“"Really happy with our performance level, to be honest with you,” he said.

“It was a proper performance, worked really, really hard. Got ourselves off to a really great start. Huge energy levels. Very accurate in what we were doing as well.

“Disappointed to concede the goal then – it gave Cork a bit of oxygen and brought them back into the game. But again, just before half-time, I thought our response was really, really good. We gained control of the game at that stage again. 

At half-time, we'd have been reasonably happy with where we were at at that stage for the half of hurling we'd done.

“We regrouped then at half-time, came back out. Just a couple of balls got away from us in those early stages, but we managed to steady ourselves again. I think it was a really, really tight game. There was never going to be a whole pile between us.

SUPER

“Obviously, there was the sending-off then and I thought our response to that by the players was really super. Again, we gave ourselves a chance to win the game.
“Just turned over one or two balls here and there and missed a couple of chances. That would have probably seen us across the line or at least get something out of the game.

“We gave ourselves an opportunity. We didn't take it today. If we play like that next weekend, we'll give ourselves a chance again.”