Had a look at the game again last night. A poor enough, scrappy encounter, with both sides making numerous handling errors, poor passes to men under pressure, dawdling in possession, etc. Cork made fewer of these mistakes than Waterford in the second half, and that was the main reason why they pulled away, but you wouldn't call it convincing. Waterford will be kicking themselves - between building an early lead, shooting terrible wides and butchering opportunities for clear shots at goal, they really should have won.
Saunderson was good on puck-outs but hit a couple of poor passes when the ball came to him in open play. He also had to scramble from his line more than once, which in fairness he did successfully.
The corner-backs were both solid. Daly was for me the best Cork player after Walsh. Downey was ok - did some good things, but was FB in the first half and the ball went behind the defence right in front of the goal on a few occasions, so he wasn't commanding his patch under the high ball as well as I would have hoped. I also felt he made a mistake going for the shoulder just before the goal - he was too far away from Fitzgerald to try that and was sidestepped too easily. In that situation I would have thought he should have moved back towards his own goal, forcing Fitzgerald to either go out wide where the angle for a shot would be tighter or to check back inside and deny him momentum.
Mullins brought great energy, especially when driving forward. Dwyer swept well, and is a fair man for the physical exchanges - his shoulder on the Waterford lad at the end of the first half was lovely. Kingston I'm not convinced by as a centre-back - maybe he could swap with Dwyer?
Healy was completely out of the game. I remember he struggled at this level as well last year but made an impact coming off the bench against Tipp - they could consider trying that again next week. Leahy also got a lot of criticism on here, but I'm going to stick up for him a small bit. In the first half he showed well for the ball, made it stick, and laid it off nicely, but his shooting was definitely off. In the second half his touch let him down and he was too easily muscled off the resulting loose ball. I'd be inclined to try him again against Tipp, perhaps alongside O'Leary. Adam O'Sullivan had three nice scores but also at least one poor wide. Hopefully if he keeps getting game time he will get better at bringing other players into the game - at present he is very much a sprint-and-shoot type, but he could be much trickier to deal with if after beating his man he gets the head up and looks for the pass.
Everyone is aware that this level of performance will not do in the other matches. There's a lot more in this side but they need to start producing it quickly. Beat Tipp next week and they'll be in a strong position to finish in the top three - lose and they'll be in a tight spot.
