Ben O'Connor: Munster finals are there to be reached and won

Ahead of the last set of Munster SHC fixtures, there was a viewpoint that it might not be the worst thing to be left standing when the music stopped.

All of Cork, Clare and Limerick had secured qualification for the All-Ireland series, with any combination of the three possible in the decider – given the deletion of the preliminary quarter-final round, the team third in Munster would be just three games away from ultimate glory, avoiding the provincial final and all that entailed.

For Cork manager Ben O’Connor, though, the final was something to target and a 1-30 to 1-14 triumph ensured their passage to a re-match with Limerick.

“Careers are short,” he said, “and, when you finish your career, you’re judged on what you’ve won.

“There’s no point in entering a competition if you have no interest in winning it. The boys here, a lot of them only have a few medals, so they want to stash away a few more. I suppose that’s the way they’re looking at it.

I think I’ve five myself, five Munster medals; I respect what a Munster medal means to fellas around the place. 

"Them lads are going to be same as I am they just want to be winning games. They want to be playing on the big days as well.

“We had maybe 35,000 Cork people out there today – it’ll be a little bit more half and half the next day. I can just imagine the Cork crowd will get a few extra tickets here and there. We might have the majority.”

With Cork’s four wins putting them top, only the victory over Limerick at SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh four weeks ago separated them from the Treatymen.

Captain Darragh Fitzgibbon and cruciate victim Ciarán Joyce will be absent for the decider – Cork’s first in the new Páirc, with the 2014 victory over Limerick their last – whereas Limerick were without Aaron Gillane for the league game and had their skipper Cian Lynch red-carded.

It might tip the balance slightly the way of John Kiely’s men but O’Connor is relishing the challenge.

“Delighted,” he said.

“For the last 10 or 12 years, they’ve been the team to beat. It’s going to be a fierce battle here again in two weeks’ time.

“We picked up a few knocks there now so the lads will be assessed in the morning so hopefully it’ll be all OK. We’ll be without Darragh the next day still and without Joycie. It is what it is, we have fellas who are mad for road. We got game time into five subs as well. So that was a plus for us.”

There were quite a few pluses though in what was Cork’s biggest championship win over Clare since a 3-22 to 2-9 victory in the 1988 Munster semi-final.

“I’m delighted with the performance out of the lads,” O’Connor said.

“It was the first day this year that we got championship weather properly so that added to it as well. I suppose Clare played last week, we had two weeks to prepare for it and that made it a bit easier, especially with the heat there in the second half. I wouldn’t read too much into it but just delighted with the win.”

CONSISTENT

Cork’s four wins from four make them the first team since Tipperary in 2019 to go through the round-robin with a perfect record. Those of a superstitious nature might point to the fact that the Premier lost that year’s Munster final to Limerick, but ultimately it’s a sign of consistency and appetite.

“We made no secret that we wanted to win every game,” he said.

We didn’t do it in the league but now in the championship so far, in the round-robin, we’ve the four of them won.

“It’s a strange situation when you’re coming up and we had three out of three and you still weren’t guaranteed to be in a Munster final. We treated today as a semi-final, that’s what lads were on about all week – it’s a semi-final, we want to get to a Munster final.

“We’re where we want to be.”