Brian Hayes hails resilience in Cork camp after another battling win

On the one hand, one might be critical at the fact that Cork’s three Munster SHC wins are accompanied by a scoring difference of ‘only’ +10.

On the other, the fact that they have beaten Tipperary by four points, Limerick by two and now Waterford by four is enough of a trend to show that the Rebels can dog it out when required.

Saturday’s 1-26 to 0-25 victory at Azzurri Walsh Park featured a seven-point haul from Brian Hayes as he took the man of the match award. The St Finbarr’s man feels that the results show the depth of character in the squad in bouncing back from last year’s All-Ireland final loss to Tipperary.

“I think it’s showing the resilience in the group again,” he said.

“A lot of questions have been asked, some fairly and some not so fairly, but we’ve just focused on ourselves, 1-37 and the management team.

“I think everyone knuckled down and worked hard in the winter, took the league as it came.

“We lost the league final but we bunkered down and gave it everything for the first two [championship] games and we were lucky to come out with two results.

“We came out with another one against Waterford and it sets us up nicely now for the summer.”

Cork are guaranteed progression from Munster and are very likely too make the provincial final, too.

On Sunday, they coped without injured defenders Ciarán Joyce and Robert Downey. The latter will hopefully be back for the Munster final if Cork get there but Joyce is ruled out until 2027 with a cruciate ligament injury.

The Castlemartyr man’s situation is something that his colleagues are using as a driving force.

“I think that’s one thing we’re always harping on about, the strength of our panel here in Cork,” Hayes said.

“Everyone, from 1-37 – there’s 26 lads togging out, another 11 at home and unfortunately, two lads couldn’t tog out, Robert and Ciarán.

“Rob will be back in a couple of weeks but Ciarán, unfortunately, his season is over. That win today was especially for him, to show what he means to us, and hopefully we can continue that throughout the summer.

“He’s a big warrior and a big loss and a good friend to all us. We’re gutted for him but it’s great to see the likes of Paudie Power come back after another tough injury – these things are never easy on players at a young age.

“Thankfully, some of us have gotten away with it over the past couple of years. We’ll stick around with the las now and hopefully they can come back on the pitch.”

Should Clare fail to beat Tipperary next Saturday night, then Cork’s passage to the decider will be rubber-stamped.

Regardless of external circumstances, Hayes and Cork will just concentrate on what is within their control.

“We’ll just focus on enjoying the win tonight and the bus back home,” he said.

“We’ll be back in the gym soon with Ian Jones and the S&C team. We’re happy enough with the six points, we won’t be looking too far ahead, we’ll get back to training and focus on the Clare game then, going forward.”