Munster SHC round-robin: Cork 0-27 Waterford 0-18
As the last team to enter a championship that is already moving at warp speed Cork had no time to lose. In what is shaping up to be the most cut-throat Munster championship since the round robin system was introduced Cork have given themselves a fighting chance with a performance that was full of guile and the required amount of grunt.
They blitzed Waterford with the wind at their backs in the first half, and despite flurries of Waterford pressure, Cork finished just as far clear at the end as they had been at the break. The energy and desire that had characterised much of Waterford’s performance against Limerick a week earlier was chillingly absent and without it they were brutally exposed.
Cork, though, were terrifically impressive. There was a distinct edge to their tracking and tackling, something which has too often been lacking over the years, and Waterford struggled to move the ball against Cork’s aggression. In the air Cork were really assertive, too, and Cork dictated everything that mattered: the shape of the game and its mood.
“I was very confident we’d go out and we’d put in a display and we’d leave everything out there,” said Pat Ryan, the Cork manager. “That’s what we’ve asked the lads to do every time they put on the Cork jersey, that they leave everything out there. There was a bit of negativity after the Kilkenny game and obviously we’d have liked to have played a bit better against Kilkenny, but I think it was a blessing in disguise in the end.
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“The way inter-county hurling is now, if you’re not going to work hard you’re not going to get anything. We’ve been accused at times in Cork of not working hard enough. I don’t think we could be accused of that today.”
Davy Fitzgerald offered no excuses. He didn’t blame the quick-turnaround, pointing to Clare’s performance in the Gaelic Grounds on Saturday night, and he couldn’t explain why his team had been so lifeless.
“It’s easy to assess the performance,” he said, “it was absolutely terrible. Lack of energy, lack of drive – it was just very disappointing. I’d love to tell you why, I just don’t know. It wasn’t the same team that lined out last week.
“Maybe it was I got something wrong during the week, I don’t know. That desire to get to the ball in front ... If you let Cork get to the ball, they’re going to hurt you, and they did that today. We have no one to look at only ourselves. We weren’t energetic and we let them dictate everything. It wasn’t good enough.”
Cork played with a strong wind in the first half and led by nine points after just 25 minutes. Darragh Fitzgibbon, making his first appearance of the season, was uncontrollable in the opening quarter and landed three points inside the first nine minutes.
That level of output was unsustainable, but all around him there were viable threats. The old dogs of the Cork attack looked sharp, particularly Patrick Horgan, and when Seamus Harnedy finally picked up a ball in a shooting position he landed Cork’s 15th point just before half-time. Horgan, Harnedy and Conor Lehane contributed seven points from play between them.
The only goal chance that Cork created was brilliantly blocked by Billy Nolan, after Horgan had carved open the Waterford defence with a surging run and played a perfectly timed pass to Brian Roche. The young Cork centre fielder, making a hugely impressive first championship start, did well to recover the ball and pop it over the bar.
Dessie Hutchinson scored Waterford’s only point from play in the first half seven minutes before the break, but every one of Waterford’s forwards was on the back foot. They managed to staunch the bleeding in the last 10 minutes of the first half, and having fallen 0-11 to 0-2 behind after 25 minutes they were still nine points down at the break, 0-15 to 0-6.
Waterford scored the first three points of the second half and nearly mustered a goal when Patrick Collins failed to control Stephen Bennett’s mis-hit shot. The ball bounced twice on the goal line before the Cork keeper made an emergency clearance.
Minutes later Peter Hogan forced a good save from Collins, before a rocket from Bennett cannoned off Damien Cahalane’s helmet and flashed past the post. The goal that they desperately needed to get back into the game, though, never materialised and Cork were 10 points clear midway through the second half. After that they were cruising.
CORK: P Collins N O’Leary, D Cahalane, G Mellerick, T O’Connell, C Joyce, R Downey (0-2), B Roche (0-1), L Meade (0-1), D Dalton (0-3, two frees), D Fitzgibbon (0-4), C Lehane (0-2), S Barrett (0-1), P Horgan (0-8, six frees), S Harnedy (0-3).
Subs: R O’Flynn (0-2) for Dalton (50 mins); P Power for Harnedy (56 mins); S Kingston for Lehane (59 mins); C Cahalane for Meade (63 mins); C O’Brien for Mellerick (70 mins).
WATERFORD: B Nolan, C Gleeson, C Prunty, M Fitzgerald, T Barron, C Lyons (0-2), J Fagan, D Lyons, J Barron (0-1), N Montgomery (0-1), S Bennett (0-9, eight frees, one 65), J Prendergast, C Dunford, D Hutchinson, M Kiely.
Subs: A Gleeson (0-1) for Kiely, P Fitzgerald (0-1) for Dunford and P Hogan (0-1) for T Barron (all h-t); C Ryan for C Gleeson and Padraig Fitzgerald (0-2) for Montgomery (both 65 mins).
Referee: James Owens (Wexford)
