The cork support, by in large are a good bunch. Great for ball hopping in good spirit. Others could learn a lot
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Cork supporters are the best.
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A lot to unravel here.
There does need to be a culture change on the Cork senior hurling team. It has happened at minor and u20 level. That now HAS to translate to Senior with the next management team appointment. Pat Ryan and Sherlock simply must be involved, if available. I would also love an outside coach that will rattle this panel.
The Cork club hurling championship is refereed too stringently according to the rules. Play the fuck on.
Strangely, yesterday was not a game we lost for being âsoftâ, or lacking the right attitude but rather just wastefulness in front of goal. Those days happen in sport, and Cork freakishly only converted 44 per cent of scoring chances - very untypical of this team. You canât expect to win a game with those conversion stats - Galway deserved it.
Fuckit, it was a sore one. Not a hope would Cork beat Limerick, but Iâd hope that weâd give a better account of ourselves this year. Tweaks that everyone had been crying out for during the last year finally happened after the Clare disaster - Joyce to 6, Connolly to 14 and Tim used as a ballwinner up front.
The players are in Cork. The culture around the team just is not there yet. A new management needs to take over this group to steer our young core in the right direction - a style of fearless hurling akin to what our 20s played with.
Iâm still hopeful we can compete next year, but a lot needs to change. Talent has gotten us so far, but it will not take Cork up the steps of the Hogan.
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Good post.
On the current culture in the set up, where do you think that stems from? Would you feel that there is too much of a hangover there from the 2000s style of play, the players from that era such as The Rock (whatâs his coaching CV by the way to be in there in the first place?) and the likes of DOG still involved?? Do you think that has been a positive influence on this current Cork team?
I think ultimately, this management team tried a style that they thought would work and were far too stubborn in rectifying the obvious problems within it.
With regards to culture, I think that has stemmed from years and years of neglect from previous county boards. We didnât win a Munster u21 from 2008 until 2018, and didnât win a Munster Minor from 2005 to 2017. Frank and his cronies dropped the ball big time.
DĂłnal Ăg has his faults of course, but heâs not the reason behind this cultural issue. He called out Cork publicly on TSG in two famous rants in 2014 and 2015, and since then Cork have improved but itâs slow.
As said previously, clearly those Minor and u20 teams had the right levels of aggression in their play. For such a thing to translate to senior level, the management team and all involved need to be wiped IMO. New slate and new ideas for a talented young pool of players.
This headline must confuse the hell out of you then.
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I thought OâMahony was one of our better players yesterday BUT playing him in the inside line along with Connolly only worked for maybe 10 minutes against Galway/Antrim before both defences sussed it out. Now you could argue we should have scored a lot more in those opening 10-15 minutes but at the same time Galway were very naive and there was a load of space in front of out full-forward line.
Whether or not OâMahony as a ball-winning half-forward actually works remains to be seen, he has always seemed far more Robbie OâFlynn than Pa Cronin when it comes to puck-outs. Although moving him to the forwards is a positive, he remains an enigma and is maybe too much of a jack of all trades.
Never truer words spoken.
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I think parking the lions share of the blame at Donal OâGradyâs door is a bit harsh. He walked the walk at I/C level and while his Cork side obviously used the running game to good effect I think it is a bit revisionist to think that the running style employed by his teams was anyway comparable to the scutter served up by Kingstonâs Cork side.
Granted it is over a decade ago but Limerick in 2011 under OâGrady were hugely improved under a short enough space of time and werenât complete slaves to a running/short passing game. I would have said that his Cork side of the mid 2000s and Limerick in 2011 would have placed huge emphasis on the fundamental skills of hurling in terms of touch, workrate, hooking/blocking/harrying etc. and were far removed from the soft touch and wishy washy levels of work rate which Cork have shown plenty of times under Kingstonâs reign.
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Is it not generally accepted that Donal OâGrady was brought into the Cork set up as one of the architects of their style of play? Cork didnât play like that in 2018, they were a bit more abrasive and mixed and varied their play more.
Theyâve gotten progressively worse since they brought OâGrady in, as mentioned above bringing his much beloved concept of playing the short pass/keeping possession and running the ball to the point of farce
Again, it doesnât make a difference if Cork want to play either a direct game or a short passing game to the nth degree or multiple sweepers or whatever variation you want. It is secondary to the fact that their work rate and other fundamentals are well below the required standard - whatever pattern or style of play you attempt to use will grind to a halt once you get to the business end of the championship unless it is underpinned by fundamental skills and workrate - something which OâGrady was pretty good at instilling in teams when he was a manager.
You can argue that the short passing has made Cork hurling soft and there may be some truth to it but looking at the team Kingston picked consistently during his time there he picked soft hurlers who had high skill over less flashy lads who were better at their application of fundamental skills. The whole balance of the team was/is wrong under him.
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I actually think its quite admirable of Kingston to pick wristy hurlers over big awkward robots.
If every county did the same, the game would be far healthier than its current, bish, bash, bosh state.
Its not a question of one over the other. Your forward unit needs balance which demands players with different skill sets. That gives flexibility and more tactical options.
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You also need to coach the lads you pick.
100 percent, management must create the right environment/culture.
Another part of the problem is that the skill levels of some of the backs just arenât good enough to play the way they want to play.
Full-back line players of most teams donât tend to be as skilful as others, I think thatâs the same everywhere, but they if you want to play out from the back, they need to be able to ping passes and their deficiencies skillwise were brutally exposed in the AI final.
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Agree with all that but they were better this year. Millerick will start cornerback or half back next year. A half back line of Millerick, Joyce and OâLeary has a lot of potential. We need a full back and a keeper.
Hurling always needed a mullocker like John Power or Bonner Maher.
I still thought they really struggled in that regard the first day against Limerick.
But thereâs no shame in not being as skilful a hurler as a corner-forward if you are playing corner-back; the problem Cork had was that if a team clogged up the spaces for their half-forwards to make runs into, they were totally reliant on going to the full-back line and building from there.
I think Cork also had a serious deficiency in terms of winning breaking ball, which has been helped by Meade being re-introduced to the team (although this could still improve further on their own long puckouts, I think).
As you say, itâs all about balance, you need to be able to do more than one thing.
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Wouldnât you agree that Cork won the vast majority of âbreaking ballâ on Saturday, Iâm sure whatever stats exist would tell that story.
Saturday was far from Corks worst performance, most of the usual criticisms couldnât be leveled at that team
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