CORK MATCH REACTION:ALL OVER at half time. As awful as that sounds. Cork weren't at the races. He can't praise Kilkenny highly enough. And yes, he thinks they're unstoppable. Some bitter truths from Cork manager Denis Walsh.
“To be involved in that situation,” he said, “where you’ve trained a team long and hard, for it to be all over before half time, that’s hugely disappointing. And the game was over at half time. That’s an awful thing to say, I know. So we feel we let everyone down, but let ourselves down, more than anyone.
“And from our point of view that’s the disappointing thing, our own performance. Because what we produced today wasn’t good enough. But we have to take that on the chin. It was a massive 15-man performance from Kilkenny. And I would have to give them huge credit.
“You can have all the preparations in the world done, but you still have to go out and produce it, between 3.30 and 5.0. And they did that. They were massive, sensational, and we would have no cribs about that. I couldn’t praise them highly enough.”
Walsh walked into the Cork dressing room at half time, and looked his team in the eye. They were 13 points adrift. What was left to play for? “Playing for pride is a term that’s commonly used,” he said afterwards, still visibly stunned by the nature of the defeat. “And we were playing for more than pride. Because we knew going out in the second half that Kilkenny wouldn’t let up. At least we stuck to our guns. Because if we came out and waved the white flag at all, they’d have added another 12 or 13 points to that score line.”
From a reasonably encouraging start, it all went rapidly downhill. How come? “True, with nearly 15 minutes gone everything was going grand,” reckoned Walsh. “But Kilkenny are just relentless. They broke down our attacks very quickly, and suddenly the ball was in the danger area, at any given time. We were lucky we didn’t concede a few more goals in the first half. We weren’t at the races. Weren’t allowed to play.”
So can Kilkenny possibly be stopped on this drive for five? “Truthfully, I don’t see it,” said Walsh definitively. “I’ve friends in Tipperary and Waterford. Whoever comes through that will relish the challenge I’m sure. But we relished the challenge. And we fell well short. We didn’t go out looking for a weakness. Just to go toe-to-toe. Just cover serious ground. But we didn’t do that. And that’s the frustrating thing.”
The question of what now for Cork is really for another day, but we ask it anyway, knowing we won’t get the definitive answer.
“We’ll sit down and look at it, the players, the backroom, and see where we’re falling short. We thought we were in a good place coming into the game. But there’s an awful lot more left in these players.”
