Well deserved for Offaly but feel for the Dublin players. Seemed to get very few of the 50-50 or even 60-40 decisions. Wouldn’t be surprised to see a number of those Dublin players playing senior hurling in a few years. Hogan, Kenny and Ó Dúlaing are serious players.
There was definitely a lot of pace in that match, more so than any of our U20 Munster Championship matches I’ve seen this year, but I can’t tell if that was down to better skill level or less physicality. Was slightly surprised by how small both teams were. It was almost like a different sport compared to our U20 semi-final against Clare. I thought at times today looked like a non-contact game because of the refereeing. I didn’t agree with all of Jordan’s decisions last Friday, but to be fair, I thought he let a lot go for both sides and it was a better game because of it.
The Dublin players will have learned a hard lesson tonight. When you’re playing in front of a big opposition crowd, you have to try and take the ref and crowd out of the game. The easiest way to do that is by going for goals instead of trying to outpoint teams, who are winning frees easier.
On that subject, as others have said, I think the key for this Cork team will be whether they can score 3 or more goals. That Tipperary full forward line is very dangerous, even without McCormack, and will score goals. Their setup on puck-outs is similar to the Cork seniors. They hit these long direct puck outs dropping just inside the 45 metre line, and then similar to the Cork seniors, they have these speed merchants mopping up the breaks or running in behind to create goal scoring opportunities.
The defender is left in a seemingly no-win scenario. If he tries to man-mark his forward the shape of the defence gets dragged all over the place, and you’ll always struggle to be first to the breaking ball. If he leaves his man and tries to get under the breaking ball and doesn’t get to it first, it creates scenarios like Tipp’s third goal against us in the first match or Clare’s goal chances against us the last day.
Would make two changes from the last day to deal with Tipp’s threats. Bring in O’Regan at midfield for O’Connell to help with dealing with their direct puck-outs and act as another option on our own. Then potentially bring in one of Wilk or A. O’Sullivan for Cremin to give us more of a goal scoring threat. Would like to see the likes of O’Sullivan, Wilk, Walsh, Healy and Buckley taking on their men and going for goals as much as possible. O’Connor was a great addition to the half-forward line and we will need him and Healy to come deep and help out with the half back line as much as possible.
