All Ireland SHC Quarter-final Dinny Cahill took yesterday's defeat in a dignified manner. Within minutes of the game ending he headed straight to the Cork dressing-room to eat humble pie. Never an easy thing, especially for a Tipperary man.

Then he faced the media and the obvious questions regarding his comments about Cork's supposed deficiencies, which his side were unable to exploit.

"I have no regrets. What I said was very simple: I said Brian Corcoran came out of retirement because they had trouble at full forward. Brian Corcoran was always a good hurler. I never said he wasn't a good hurler. I said he might be thinking of retiring when the game is over.

"It was an awful shame that Brian did miss out in the last four years - he would've been an awful boost to them in an all-Ireland final.

"The comments were blown completely out of proportion. What I said was very simple stuff. I was more critical of the Tipperary defence than I was of Niall McCarthy or Brian Corcoran. It was not what I said but just how they picked it up."

Cahill pointed out that the loss of midfielder Ciarán Herron was a crucial blow as it deflated his team's preparations.

"Cork can afford to do without one of their top players. One of ours was missing there today and he was an All Star replacement last year. One Antrim player is the equivalent of three Cork players because we don't have the players to come in.

"And it had an awful effect. We were on a high coming in and then we got this downer and I'd say the team was very nervous for the first half.

"Some of our top players didn't hurl either," he continued. "The likes of Michael McCambridge, who is a tremendous hurler, he didn't get out of the traps at all. That's the ifs and buts of hurling. I'm looking forward to that squad staying together and giving Division One hurling a good run this coming year and use it as a learning process."

Cahill's allotted time with Antrim is now finished, but the Tipperary native was not prepared to make a definitive decision.

"I was asked to do the job for three years and I gave it my best shot in the three years. I'll sit down and think about it at this stage and see what's there.

"There is a lot of work to

be done in Antrim; there is a lot of work to be done in the weaker counties."

A relaxed Donal O'Grady refused to be drawn into the storm about Cahill's assertion that Antrim would prevail. Anyway, his players gave the ideal response.

"I don't comment on what other managers say. You try to get your team to deal as professionally as they can with preparation and maybe some of the players were motivated themselves by what was said.

"I didn't read it as such, but I heard what was said. These are things that managers do to maybe whip up enthusiasm in their camp, you know, but Dinny congratulated us after the game.

"Our main effort today was just to get into the semi-final and we did that."