Cork Hurlers - Part 2

[Twiceasnice97]

People would need to calm the fuck down.

If you stop working from a 'we are cork basis' and started thinking that right now Clare have better hurlers than Cork yesterdays performance by cork has a lot to build on.

Corks keeper isn't great, but he's not useless either. Saunderson has a season in a really dominant u 20s team and a few league matchs.

Maybe he is good enough. Picking him now is bollox.

The cork defence is fine other than maybe Eoin Downey isn't quite ready.
O leary should be first choice. Putting in next weeks flavour of the month won't help.

The clare forwards are exceptionally good with two of the most unorthodox hurlers ( o donnell and Duggan ) that have ever played.
It's really tough to play against them.

O mahony got destroyed by Duggan but he never quit and took serious punishment out there.

Midfield is the area that needs a rethink. Personally I just cannot understand the brian Roche situation.

Here is a lad who did really well last year grafting away doing the donkey work but is dropped this year , presumably due to his hurling , giving him no chance to grow.


harnedy and horgan were mighty. Both their markers, hayes and ryan are quick experienced skilful hurlers but they both had to fight hard to contain them and didht succeed until well into the match. Real leadership.

Connolly is a great player. He looks dangerous every time he gets the ball . He found it tougher on Hogan when cleary swopped to Hayes after the yellow

Hayes and Daltons value only became apparent when they went off. Hayes may not make it but he should get the chance. Dalton I am torn on . Some great scores but did he abdicate responsibility for mcinerney A bit

The subs weren't great.

Coleman is the great conundrum. Beautiful ball player
After that

O Flynn was off the pace and he was marking a sub making his championship debut.
Leen got the better of it.

In the end there should be at least 13 of that 15 starting the next day.

Cork simply don't have the players to justify that sort of lurching about.

Is there any element at all of Cork people being proud of the way their team stuck at it in the face of hammer blow goals 2 weeks in a row.

Naturally I hope Ryan makes 4 or 5 changes and completely blows things up.

Ps
Rob Downey to 12 ?

Thoughts ?

 

[StoneHouse]

Am I going mad? I thought Tim was cleaned out, swinging his hurley one handed like a junior player. Duggan was laughing at him. His hand pass out to set up one of the last Clare points was comical.

 

[BossHogg]

It’s an excellent and insightful post. Give it the time to read.

Will come back to it maybe at the weekend when I have an afternoon free

 

[red&blue]

It was a stupid and needless body check by SOD and even more so on a yellow card. Sadly for us, guys coming back from injury look far from ready for championship hurling - Robbie and Coleman in particular. But at the end of the day we simply can’t win enough ball to be able to consistently threaten the opposition. That’s killing us and I don’t see any quick fix there. We need a Duggan or Hegarty who can guarantee us a steady supply of decent ball. I don’t think Sean Twomey is at that level but who else is.???

I’d agree with all that. Sean is that type of player but he hasn’t yet shown enough to be a starter, I think we have to play Tim at 12 with Deccie at 10, although for the Limerick game I would get them to swop wings.

 

[Hurlywurly]

Have had a flick through the last few pages and the negativity is way over the top.

We had a poor performance down in Walsh Park - 6 changes were made and a dramatically improved performance was needed, and that's what we got.

We were playing the 2nd best team in the country (they might prove to the be the best yet this year) and definitely the best attacking team in the country, and I think we were the better team on balance when it was 15v15. Kind of a pointless comment but I genuinely believe that we would have gone on and won it without the sending off.

Just to breakdown the changes first:
Eoin Downey, Niall O'Leary, Tim O'Mahony into the back line and I thought the 3 of them put in huge shifts. I've been critical of NOL but he put in a big performance. Same with ED - he did a great on Aidan MacCarthy overall, great paw and needs to stay in the team. Tim had a real tough one against Duggan, and there was an obvious switch to be made, but I thought he showed his value to the team, we have more fire and aggression as a team when he's on the field.

Ethan Twomey, Dalton, Hayes also did well. Hayes should have done more with a few balls in the first half, Adam Hogan was on top but Dalton was excellent (himself and TOM are our most aggressive players) - we lost something when he went off unfortunately. E Twomey will have got loads out of that - he got on plenty ball, he's a super athlete and he'll keep on getting better.

The pressure was on Hoggie and Harnedy of course after thursday evening's team announcement. Hoggie was excellent. Clare don't have a number 4 (this is going to keep catching them) and Hoggie took advantage. Harnedy did well initially and in fairness he was everywhere but Ryan got on top eventually. But fair fucks to the 2 boys - they both delivered a performance.

So what went right and what went wrong?
The first 45 minutes were exactly what we wanted. We moved the ball quickly, we were looking for the right lads at the right time, we were accurate. Most importantly, we got bodies back to support the full back line and conceded frees when we needed.

Barrett was pulling Conlon all over the place (although he never did the damage that he should have done), Connolly had Cleary on a yellow, Darragh was finding space, Joyce and Rob Downey hurling well. We had the Clare defence in bother and probably should have another 2 goals (the Darragh chance and Barrett chance had to be converted). Work-rate was excellent. Only thing you could fault in the first two thirds of the game were the puc-outs, Collins was under-hitting too many and it kept Clare in the game in that period. Clare weren't playing poorly at all at this stage so I think it's important to note we are at the level required when we're on it.

What went wrong was all preventable in my opinion. We got a bit caught up in that early second half excitement and our half back line and midfield totally lost their shape and followed the Clare half forwards out the field like an u14 team really. It was incredibly difficult for our full back line to manage 1 on 1s in that amount of space. This was totally different to the first half. To compound that we made poor changes. The 2 Roches should have been on the bench and Brian should have replaced Twomey or Dalton, and Eoin (who did really well in Ennis in March) should have replaced SOD (or if you wanted to keep SOD on the pitch, get him out of that full back line and into the middle of the field). You can't go around after Shane O'Donnell and Rodgers on a yellow card.

Those giving out about the second yellow I'd say haven't played in many high intensity matches. It's a split second thing and I think if that's Clare v Limerick reffed by Keenan or KK v Galway reffed by Gordon its either play on or maybe a free, it's a harsh yellow. I've said for ages that SOD shouldn't be in the corner, and I didn't see anything yesterday to change my mind on that but I wouldn't be hard on him for the second yellow. He shouldn't have been on Shane O'Donnell at that stage and it was complete madness leaving him 1v1 on him on several occasions while on a yellow. Watch Limerick playing Shane O'Donnell - they never leave anyone 1v1 on him, they know you need a second defender in there immediately, probably the most dangerous forward in the country along with Gillane.

Other changes didn't work either. ROF is unfit and out of form. Coleman did ok. Meade shouldn't be on the match day panel. There are small changes that are staring us in the face that can make that difference - others have mentioned it already but we need to pick a midfield that help us to concede less. When was the last time you saw a Cork number 8 or 9 getting in a hook to stop a goal, or just making a tackle in our 21?

Clare played some super hurling, and they're missing 2 top players so they are a serious side. We were better than them for a good chunk of it but ultimately we shot ourselves in the foot by not prioritising how we would stop them as the game played out.

Players and management got a lot right yesterday, the players gave absolutely everything, and it was fantastic to see great attacking hurling by Cork down the pairc in a game of the highest quality. Smarter defensive thinking about positioning and personnel would have got us over the line.

Thank you morello, good to read something that's considered

 

[Matlock]

Am I going mad? I thought Tim was cleaned out, swinging his hurley one handed like a junior player. Duggan was laughing at him. His hand pass out to set up one of the last Clare points was comical.

Donal O Grady was behind us on the terrace. He was comical at times shouting "encouragement" to Tim, in a very similar manner to how one might address a dog.

"No point chasing him now Tim, you see he doesn't have the ball..."

 

[Twiceasnice97]

That’s a very one-eyed interpretation. It was certainly silly by SOD and arguably merited the yellow card for brainlessness but to suggest he stepped debatable I would suggest. O’Donnell went down like he was shot. He has previous in this. Both a brilliant and clever player

The one eyed opinion is your own.
O donoghues decision is stupid

 

[SoundMan]

That's not the incident
Collins is running off with the ball
O donnell goes to run after him and donoghue takes him out. 100% a yellow leading to a red

O'Donnell ran at O'Donnoghue - Collins was miles away, not in that line, and O'Donnell hadn't a prayer of even getting close to him, much less tackling him. Cuteness out of O'Donnell engineering a free and a card for O'D and worst case scenario for Clare it would have been a free out and it was slowing down a Cork attack. The whole "oh goddy I'm dying" carry on out of the Clarebitch was pitiful and clearly designed to fool the ref into brandishing a card.

 

[Collio64]

Speak for yourself.
Not the "whole place" because you have not got a scooby.
Talking about replacing the manager with 2 games left to play is your perogative, but it's s*** talk.

I think the only ones without a scooby are the management team, its backwards we have gone. Some decisions have been wrong (in almost every game) and naive over the past two years.

Remember when we used to actually qualify, like every year? and we still gave out.

 

[SoundMan]

The ref was telling Collins to play on and puck it out..Collins all he had to do was put the puck out over the line & stop play. It was a joke as you say

Are you 100% sure Collins would have been able to find the line with his puck out yesterday?