Two months ago, 90% of Cork supporters identified Joyce as a nailed on centerback for the next 5+ years. Close to that would have identified him as Cork’s best player. That population was devastated to hear he was hurt prior to the Limerick game.
Downey comes in and does a great job filling in and now it seems like 90% of posters here are shipping Joyce to the bench or midfield where he has never played for Cork. Talk about prisoners of the moment! I’d say a lot of the same people said Coleman can’t play 7, and Hayes wasn’t up to IC standard and Horgan and Harnedy were finished, and Fitzgibbon was not a midfielder and Ryan was lost on the line. Sheesh.
To be fair, I think most on here make fairly rational comments e.g. 'Fitzgibbon could do so much damage at half forward' and a tiny minority (often 1) make the extreme comment e.g. 'Fitz is not a midfielder and never was'.
One of the other posters picked up on it a few pages back, but if we're going to start looking beyond Sunday and start thinking of having a proper crack in 2024 there are areas to improve and Joyce plays a massive role when you look at those.
I'm still watching TOM even over the last 2 weeks and thinking he belongs in a different part of the pitch - he's a pure baller, he wants to be playing the harlem globetrotter stuff all the time. I can't find the clip from Sunday online but there's a passage of play where there's a ball delivered to Tim from the full back line and he immediately gives a wristy bullet of a pass to Downey who does the same down to the right hand corner to Hayes maybe. If it had ended in a score the clip would be everywhere, but TOM's hurling ability is phenomenal - he's so instinctive... and at times that can be a problem at 5. He got very lucky in the first half that the flicks that went wrong didn't cause more damage. He played with discipline in fairness against Limerick but couldn't cope with Duggan against Clare.
Ethan Twomey is having his breakthrough season in what is going to be a stellar Cork career I have no doubt but there are understandable signs of rawness in each game, where he looks a little lost and drives a ball to nobody or doesn't see a tackle coming. Twomey has great footwork in tight situations and he is getting through some amount of work in the last 2 weeks but if you're looking at 5 or 8 for Joyce, it's probably 8 for me. The 2 Downeys at 3 and 6 is definitely something to be left alone. Rob reminds me of Brian Hogan at 6 for KK, with more eye-catching players at either side of him. On the pace point - ironically, his lack of it means he's not darting everywhere, he's holding the centre and crucially Coleman and TOM have buckets of pace to cover across and clog up the centre, which Coleman did on numerous occasions on Sunday.
For all the talk of Connolly & Barrett and co, the player to have the greatest impact on the turnaround is Patrick Collins. The puc-outs stats on Sunday were outrageous - 27 out of 34 and plenty of those long. 79% which was even better than his Limerick stat of 74%. Tipps was 57%; Limericks 58%. Thomas Walsh played his part (as did Stack) in letting all the quick ones go - there were quite a few borderline before the second whistle (expect our next opponents, if we get some luck to get an opponent, to call that out pre-match). Anyway, I don't think Collins falls into the issue bracket anymore... and there's no viable alternative so not much of a debate to had.
There are 2 final issues however - SOD is consistently having 'moments' - no different to any other season in the last 4 or 5 years. He's a great leader and ferocious competitor but we have to remove him from receiving short ones at the very least. It was good to see Coleman in the left corner back position receiving a couple on Sunday so hopefully that's a conscious development from the coaches. Lastly, substitution strategy - Meade was outstanding on Sunday, fair play to him. Hopefully it was horses for courses as against Clare it wasn't the right call, and it wouldn't be against the likes of KK or Limerick either. Lehane struggled a bit. I'll link this to a positive team point: his game is about jinking into pockets of space (often sideways or backwards) & getting shots away... contrast to Connolly, Hayes and particularly Barrett - their focus is beating the man by heading aggressively goal-ward and creating 2v1s and giving the ball to the player in the most dangerous position. I thought there was a bit of a culture clash watching Lehane in that cameo on Sunday. In fairness to Canning, his comment was spot-on also - the biggest change in Cork's attack since Pat took over last year is the team-work... work the ball to the player in the best position and go for the goal when it's on.
TOM & Coleman have a bit of that previous system hangover at the back also when over-playing it at times (TOM v Tipp & Coleman v Limerick).
These are a few of things that can catch us but they're mostly addressable and the coaching team deserve huge credit for fixing things over the last few weeks and creating the foundations for the lads to cut lose in the style that they have done over the last couple of weeks. There's a real clarity to how we play now, which was something we were all struggling to see for a long time, everyone was so decisive on Sunday... Coleman summed this up with the speed he was playing at, no turning back, driving forward, moving the ball quickly & mixing it up between short and long.
