Waterford v Cork: Ben O'Connor encouraged as Rebels grind it out

The manner of Cork’s third straight Munster SHC win pleased manager Ben O’Connor as much as the victory itself.

Having beaten Tipperary by four points, Limerick by two and now Waterford by four on Saturday evening, the Rebels are almost assured of a place in the provincial final and a chance to retain their title.

The 1-26 to 0-25 triumph at Azzurri Walsh Park was certainly hard-earned against a Waterford side battling hard to keep their aspirations alive and not until a trio of points was followed by Mark Coleman’s penalty goal did Cork finally put daylight between themselves and their hosts.

For O’Connor, the steel required to garner such a result was hugely encouraging.

“I think the group is happy at the moment, as a whole,” he said, “and I think we're working hard.

“It isn't going to be free-flowing hurling every day. You see a different side to these lads now, that we can battle as well like, because that was a battle outside there, and I don't think it has to be free-flowing for us to win games.

“We're able to battle out games now.”

Given that Waterford had scored 4-21 in going down by three points to Clare while scoring 3-24 against Tipperary, the fact that Cork kept a clean sheet went a long way towards securing the points.

Coming after allowing 1-22 to Tipp and holding Limerick to 1-23, it was further proof of how Cork cannot be seen as an easy touch defensively.

“Yeah, with the way the game's gone now, 30 points is a par-for-the-course score,” O’Connor said.

“But, look, every team's going to get scores, and we're just hoping that we'll out-shoot them at the other side as well. We got the one goal today again, so I suppose that's something we'll have to look at.

“We'd like to be getting a couple more goals than that, but look, once you're winning, it makes no difference. If a team gets 3-20, once we've beat them on points, we don't mind whether we get goals or not.”

Cork trailed by 0-13 to 0-12 at half-time, with Waterford goalkeeper Billy Nolan having saved the visitors’ first penalty, taken by Alan Connolly.

Nevertheless, O’Connor was satisfied with such a situation, Cork having played into a strong wind.

“We made more chances against the breeze than with the breeze,” he said.

“If you had told us before the game that we'd be a point down at half-time, after playing against that breeze, we'd have been happy.

“As it turned out, we probably should have been up four or five points maybe at half-time, turning around, and I suppose the longer the game went on in the second half, we were maybe worried that we wouldn't get in front.

“Every time we got a score, they seemed to come back and put one on the board as well. But as soon as the penalty went in, that gave us another boost, and Darragh [Fitzgibbon] nailed the last free.

“Four points up with a couple of minutes to go, we weren’t going to be beaten at that stage.”

Waterford are not eliminated from the championship but they must beat Limerick at TUS Gaelic Grounds next Sunday and also need other results to go their way.

On top of three first-half injuries that saw Ian Kenny, Iarlaith Daly and Stephen Bennett depart, their manager Peter Queally was left disappointed with the black cards issued to Mark Fitzgerald and Jack Fagan for the penalty concessions.

“They had such a huge bearing on the game, especially the second one,” he said.

“I thought we recovered from the first one well, the lads really dug in and Billy saved the penalty as well which was a huge bonus, it gave us a huge lift.

“We actually won that ten minutes by a point but to suffer the second one with ten minutes to go and the scores level, they get the goal from it and are a man up, that was a huge turning point for us and detrimental in the end.

“In fairness to the lads, they never put the heads down. The created a couple of goal chances, even with 14 men, Peter Hogan had a very good chance and it was an excellent save from Pa Collins at that stage.

“I can't fault the lads for the effort again today, they've been outstanding in their effort.”