Cork Hurlers - Part 2

[hurley68]

Wouldn't be angry about that. It's 50/50 when a fella like Kelly is drilling them. Might as well guess than be dumbfounded in the middle of the goal stuck to the ground. If he saved it he would've looked like a genius. Theres a reason soccer goalies guess, and the ball isnt travelling half as fast.

Perhaps he is a genius

 

[Twiceasnice97]

Nice post- 9- Eoin Downey same category.
15- ye hurled better but we missed good goal chances. Don’t think Clare are hiding this Cork team.

One thing the last couple of weeks that is annoying for all fans is this diving on the ground and acting like you’ve been shot in the face. Kelly end of game and another Clare boy last week vs Waterford. Don’t like to see it.
Hope ye win the Munster final, should be a cracker.

Fitzgibbon v Waterford seems to have slipped your mind. Not forgetting Harnedy blocking Conor Gleeson and getting pulled down but then holding his head trying to engineer a red.
Gardiner was doing it 25 years ago.
Pot kettle black.

 

[Twiceasnice97]

I can't get over the level of rage towards the management tbh

 

[Crankycorner]

I can't get over the level of rage towards the management tbh

Some around here operate on the basis that if Cork lose that someone must be to blame and by hook or crook a scapegoat or scapegoats will be identified.

 

[Orchard thief]

There’s no grey area with some fellas when it comes to the cork hurlers.

The Meyler/Kingston out brigade seem to think Pat Ryan is an infallible messiah and that management alone is why previous cork teams didn’t prevail.

Then you’ve others who think the players simply don’t have what it takes and are letting Ryan down same as they let Meyler/KK down.

Truth is always somewhere in the middle.
We’d a few lads fail to perform yesterday and also made a few dubious calls on the line. Shared responsibility.

We are probably ranked 4-6 in Ireland currently. Not a million miles away from 1-3 but without Coleman and ROF we need to be pretty much perfect to make the jump up this year.

The Limerick game will define our year. A battling performance away against one of the finest teams of all time and regardless of result it’s been a decent first year for Ryan.

A bad defeat would make the next 6-9 months very long.

 

[Hill Street Blue]

3 obvious changes for next week in my opinion. Tommy, Lehane and Conor Cahalane lose out to probably Mellerick, TOM and Kingston/Barrett. And for god sake - don’t let Hoggy near a penalty again. I’ve seen him miss way more than score. This lightens our bench significantly which is not ideal. Fellows like Power Hayes and Sean Twomey need to be ready to step up.

 

[RightHalfBack]

Not a chance Roche won’t play, he was superb

Could have got a draw from today or even scraped a win but the reality is we once again only played for about 50 minutes and the periods when we go to sleep we make mistakes on the ball, are way too louse and as a result cough up scores.

Look if someone had told us that we would be heading into knockout championship territory on May 28 we would have taken it so we just have to keep moving. There is easily another 20-30% in that Cork team and we lost by a point to a very good side. The full back line was very good overall I thought and Damien once again outstanding, Joyce got on a lot of ball even if he was a bit loose at times and Downey was excellent and gave great deliveries into the forwards. TOC is not a natural defender and this is now becoming obvious but let’s not throw a good hurler under the bus. Collins hung him with one puck out which didn’t go to hand ( criminal and Collins did the same to Downey late on against Tipp ) and I think it affected his confidence thereafter. Meade and Roche excellent until they tired and Harnedy worked very hard but that is not enough players firing together to win a match. Kingston made a difference when he came in.

We can beat Limerick and if we want to have a chance of rattling an AI then we need to win what are all knockout games from now on. No panic just determination is what is needed now and my team v Limerick would be :-

Collins
NOL Damien SOD
RD. Joyce. ED
Tim. Meade Fitz
Harnedy Dalton Twomey
Hoggy. Kingston

As pointed out by a few posters I was probably harsh on Roche here ( unintentionally ) - I was thinking we may need to play a different type of game completely to take out Limerick so I was focusing more on running at them from deep at speed than creating a battleground in the middle. Haven’t watched the game back yet but Roche got 2 points from midfield so clearly contributed a lot.

Clearly we are not a million miles off it but we are still missing something and continue to be way too loose around the middle third coughing up lots of easy scores from distance

 

[Northcorkman]

Nonsense, we lost by a point.

Limerick also lost by a point in one game with a par performance against a team on their best day and everybody has them dead and buried. Watching the lim match back last night tipp were lucky to get the draw. We are up against it next week regardless of what coach or team we have

 

[Hurlywurly]

I thought Roche had a fine game.

My highly simplistic take on our predicament is that we need to up the rate of our point scoring from distance to beat Limerick, or just point scoring in general.

Next to Waterford we score the least amount of points per game on average.
I think a few momentum stopping / crowd lifting points from distance are badly needed in those periods of the game when we drift out of it. Or simple tap overs when a goal is less probable

We've addressed our habit of starting slowly but the issue has now shifted to the second quarter where we lose shape and the scoring dries up.

We come roaring back into it in the final quarter, which is a massive plus and finishing strong is fantastic, we know we have that in our locker

I don't have a solution to the second quarter conundrum but I hope that management can come up with the answers to it next Sunday.

No reason why the can't.

On Limerick, unfortunately they are probably glad it's us they face in this knockout given recent history in the championship.
I imagine the tackling will be beyond savage so that's something we'll have to withstand.
We'll also need to stop Gearóid having his renaissance versus us, he usually kills us so we're going to need a serious plan for that.

 

[SoundMan]

Not long back from Ennis and after watching it back again. I must say it was an electric atmosphere and a grain of rice would have tipped the scales. After watching it back on tv again I feel this game was left behind us on the line . Tommy O Connell should have been pulled off Tony Kelly after 14 seconds, I was baffled to see him come back on again after the blood sub and shed two more scores , I need not go further into this match up as im
Certain it was very plain to see by all . Dalton, Lehane and Conor Cahalane should not have started , we had better options on the bench.


Met a man coming out and he said if Kieran Kingston had this bunch for another year (as reports say was the players wish) that we would be in a munster final now headed to Limerick to give a few fellows a run, after watching this game back , I cant disagree. Unfortunately we are staring down the barrel at our first ever knockout from the round robin .

Damien Cahalane was excellent today .

Agreed completely on TOC, and PR and his backroom team share a lot of blame for that and need to learn, but not sure how Dalton should not have started. He was brilliant in our last outing against Tipp.

Better options on the bench? That's what concerned me a bit yesterday, I was expecting a big kickon from Cork when we emptied our bench and fair enough we did reel in Clare after going 8/9? behind after their penalty but I don't think we really upped the gears. Kingston was good at getting our penalty but not sure he did a huge amount more for a guy with fresh legs - fair enough you can only see on TV what the camera man is pointing the camera at so maybe he was doing trojan work off the ball.

Biggest disappointment was the inaction of our management team at half time (or even before it) when it was clear some of the matchups just weren't working and they made no changes. Given the 1 point defeat in the end we could have won it and been in the Munster Final instead of staring at the possibility of only having one game left.