Cork eased through the first round in Munster yesterday and won't look back on this game with either fondness or curiosity. Gerald McCarthy stood on the pitch he so often graced and considered the question of what route is best for those wanting a long haul through the summer.

Some suggest that heading off into the qualifiers might be better than skipping through the provincial championship. This theory sits well with a corollary theory which suggests that Cork peaked too early last year. Gerald shrugged. Smiled.

"Maybe they haven't peaked. Whatever about it being easier to go that way it's better to be in a winning vein than losing. I think we may peak at the right time this year. We have room for that at this stage. We do need to up our performance. I know that. The players know that. The main thing is that a lot of the players showed they had the hunger. That's what you want in the first round."

Of course we wanted something else too. The breakdown of what happened on the way to the throw-in. Sitting high in the press box we just saw two teams explode on the field like saloon bar brawlers who had burst through the swing doors and out on to the main drag in Dodge City. Quite theatrical. The players, though, were nonplussed.

"I don't know myself what happened," said Ronan Curran "We were just called out to the pitch. We just go out when we are told. I don't know. I just came across something there. These things happen at the start of a game. It's first round of Munster championship. We won't worry about it.

"We didn't talk about it. There was no need. You know what you are going to get in Munster championship. It's always going to be tough. You have to be ready for the unexpected, be able to cope with anything. It's just a matter of regaining our composure and doing the simple things right and start from there. It didn't provoke us. . . We battled on."

"The game was played in great spirits after," said Diarmuid O'Sullivan. "Both teams, it was out of mutual respect that something kicked off. . .. It was a silly decision (sending both teams out together) Both teams were anxious. We wanted to get out, we'd been in there long enough."

Gerald McCarthy was thankful for the win. "It's a relief really," he said. "First-round games are notorious. You don't know if your lads are up to it until you are into it. We learned very quickly it would be a tough, hard battle. We were ready for that. We expected that it would be tough, hard and physical. We are just happy that we got the right scores at the right time."

Curran turned in a sublime performance in Cork's much-vaunted half-back line. "Every time he plays he just gets better and better," said Gerald McCarthy. "He was majestic there today. Certainly one of the really big performances for us was from Ronan Curran."

Tony Considine has spent the spring being embattled and besieged but wasn't overly perturbed by a defeat which wasn't wholly unexpected. " I'm disappointed to lose of course, everyone wants to do well in the Munster championship. But I know we didn't perform like we are capable of performing. We found our form for a few minutes in the second half, got a goal and a few points.

"Cork missed a lot, we missed a lot. It was a very poor standard of hurling altogether."

As for the qualifiers which now beckon? "We didn't want it that way but psychologically it is there that way.

"We have no complaints whatsoever. Maybe I did a few things wrong as well, picking fellas here and there.

"We tried to change the trend of the game and we got into it. If we were to have a chance at all we needed to get a good start. We didn't get that. It was nine points to four in the first half. Brutal game. We were only five points down, though, two pucs of a ball. We got back into the game. Nine down and then back to four or five points and I said 'Jesus we are in with a chance here'.

"We lost a lot of key players over the last year. You can't replace them. You can't be talking about them forever either. It's time to move on."

And so they do. They join Antrim and Galway and a team from Leinster in qualifying. Cork head on to meet Waterford in a re-run of the League semi-final. What will be different this time Gerald McCarthy was asked.

" The result hopefully."

A light moment on a flat day.