This article is from page 110 of the 2008-07-22 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 110 JPG
THE purveyors of doom _ were quick to write Cork’s obituary after their laboured win over Dublin last week. Their lacklustre performance prompted rumours of unrest in the camp and Galway were installed as hot favourites for Saturday’s All-Ire- land qualifier.
But a team is always at their most dangerous when written off and Cork defied the odds and even a numbert- cal disadvantage to overturn a two point half-time deficit and produce arguably their best championship performance in two years.
The final whistle was greeted like an All-Ireland win as players ran the length of the field and thousands of supporters invaded the turf of Sem-
ple Stadium, singing and chanting for over an hour after the game.
Cork manager Gerald McCarthy was equally elated but had also a bone to pick with the media over the treatment of the players in the lead up to the game.
“Tl think whether we won or lost, I think it was very unfair, the press treatment that these bunch of players got from the press during the week. I think the way our players were writ- ten off so completely but not just that, they were ridiculed in some eon
“There were a lot of things said about the style of play, there was questioning whether they would ever last again and some of them mightn’t make it through this year. That was disappointing, that a bunch of play-
ers that they are and what they have given to the game and the determi- nation they bring to their training and everything they do in hurling. Somebody questioned ‘had they lost the love for hurling’ in one of the pa- pers during the week and I think the answer to that was out there for eve- rybody to see today.”
Still, he could understand some of the criticism after the Dublin per- formance but explained that it was fatique that affected his players that day after a hard week of training in order to prepare them for the long road ahead.
“Well it’s easy to do off the back of one or two bad results. People are very anxious to look further down the line and say that this team is fin- ished. When you look at the Tipper-
ary game, we really had that game there for the winning but we went into a valley period after twenty min- utes and that affected us.
“But the way we played for the first twenty minutes, if we could have sus- tained that for most of the game, we certainly would be winning many, many games. SO we were very, very determined and the Dublin game last week really brought the critics out but we as a management took a cal- culated risk. We trained the players hard through that week to look be- yond the game with Dublin and per- haps we could have paid the penalty for it but we had to look at this week to get a bit of rest into the players and that’s what we did. That affected the players against Dublin and that’s not taking anything away from Dub-
lin. They hurled very well and they stayed with us in lots of places but that was the reason for it. Our lads were tired.”
So what about the prospect of meet- ing Clare for the fourth time in as many years?
“Tt will be tough, Clare are always tough but to be honest, we hadn’t re- ally looked past Galway. But I can tell you, we are on the crest of a wave and we are going to drive forward. We are not just satisfied with beating Galway, we want to go all the way in this championship and we are quite capable of doing that.”
The fighting spirit is back in Cork. They tore up the script with their teeth on Saturday after the press had fueled their motivation.
Rebels by name, Rebels by nature.