Eoin Cadogan expects strong response from Cork hurlers in 2027

Former Cork dual star Eoin Cadogan can empathise with the situation the county’s hurlers found themselves in in the wake of the All-Ireland SHC semi-final loss to Galway – and he expects a response when 2027 comes around.

As a whole, the Cork year was not a bad one: they reached the league and Munster finals, losing both to Limerick, as well as winning all four Munster SHC round-robin games.

Naturally, the 11-point defeat to Galway remains fresh in the memory and there is no immediate chance to put it right, meaning it has been heavily dissected by a variety of stakeholders.

Cadogan feels that the nature of the loss must be properly examined so as to learn and improve.

“When you’re from Cork, there's huge expectation,” said Cadogan, a BoyleSports ambassador, “and when there's huge expectation and you don't get over the line, there obviously comes huge disappointment.

“With huge disappointment comes question marks and that's normal. That's life.

“I think with that expectation, maybe outside of Cork, there can be a perception that, ‘Keep them down, let's cut the legs from them, let's keep on top of them, let's keep on top of them,’ but that's high-level sport.

It's very, very easy to point fingers and tell fellas what they should be doing, whereas there can be only one team win the All-Ireland at the end of the day.

“There's multiple other teams, whether it be hurling or football, that start out in October, November, December, all with the same goal, all with the same vision and belief and, all of a sudden, it gets swept from underneath you. Things don't go to plan and then everything comes into question.

“I suppose the big thing really for us, as a county going forward, is we do need to review what happened. We do need to see, is what we're doing working? Because it's not, obviously, and how can we make ourselves better to give ourselves a better opportunity to finally get over the line?

“And finally getting over the line might mean winning a league title in a tight game or starting to win closer games.

“If there's anyone hurting moreit's going to be the players and the backroom, because you know exactly what they sacrificed.

“I've been there and I've been on the ends of hammerings in finals. It's not a nice place to be.

Room to improve

“You question everything about yourself, you question everything about where are we at going into next year? How can I get better? Will I still be there?

“These are the questions that all these players and the management teams, whether it be from Cork or from Kilkenny or Wexford, are all asking themselves for the weeks and months leading into it.

“So hopefully we see a reaction and a response to that.”

With regard to the game itself and Cork’s difficulty in coping with Galway’s style of play, Cadogan can again put himself in the players’ shoes and know the difficult in trying to turn the tide.

“I think sometimes, when you plan for opposition gameplans and you don't get a foothold on how it's happening in-game, it can be very, very difficult to change that momentum,” he said.

“I'm going way back now – and I don't like going way back – but when Donegal brought this very, very defensive 14, 15 men behind the ball, we had mimicked that in training for two, three weeks – same type jerseys, bodies back.

“But again, once the actual occasion came of an All-Ireland semi-final, it was very, very different to what we had mimicked because it's not the exact same feel.

I'd be slow to criticise anyone in terms of not getting tactical match-ups right because in that moment when momentum shifts from you and it starts to get away from you, it can be very, very hard to change it in-game.

“That's probably why the likes of Limerick are so, so good, that over the years from experience, they've found a way.

“That's what makes those guys All-Ireland champions multiple times versus probably where we're coming from in terms of trying to get over the line, eventually.”