A FEW DAYS out from their crunch All-Ireland semi-final against Dublin and Pat Ryan is in a straight talking mood when it comes to Cork player availability.
Seamus Harnedy will be absent with a hamstring injury. There is more hope now in the Cork camp that Ger Millierick can force his way into the reckoning and more concern that Cormac O’Brien will have to sit this one out.
“Séamus is definitely out. Ger was back hurling. To be honest, it surprised us a bit. He took a full part last night (Monday) in training.
“When it’s not a leg injury or a back injury or one of those, your hand kind of comes around quickly enough. There’s a bit of strapping on it but he’s in good shape physically. They’ve got a lot of work into him, so he’s probably in the best condition he’s ever been in physically for himself, which is great.
“Cormac O’Brien is a bit of a doubt now as well. It’s a small bit of a quad thing. If you remember back, Cormac did a quad against Clare starting off. He kind of re-injured it again. It’s nothing major. He was on the field a bit last night (Monday) but we were hoping he’d have done a bit more. We’ll see where that lies.”
Having Declan Dalton back in harness is a boost for Cork but Ryan is conscious of the void Harnedy creates by being unavailable.
“Look, to be honest, I don’t think we have anyone on our panel that can replace Seamus.
He’s such a huge player for Cork over the last couple of years. A real warrior spirit in the way he plays. It’s just something that we’ve needed from a ball-wielding ability.
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“But Declan being back is a huge addition to us. The team isn’t finalised at the moment with Robbie Flynn going very well, Connolly, Lehane, Shane Kingston, Brian Roche going well. They all played well and we came on in the Munster final.
“Declan obviously has the ability to be able to take long-range threes as well as a huge asset that we probably have missed with Declan out of the team.”
Cork's Seamus Harnedy and Peter Casey of Limerick. Laszlo Geczo / INPHO
Laszlo Geczo / INPHO / INPHO
When Cork met Dublin last year at the All-Ireland quarter-final stage, Robert Downey was ruled out through illness which forced Cork into a late pre-match change as Luke Meade started.
In general Ryan has tended to avoid any last minute alterations, his midweek team announcements can be trusted.
If dummy selections were a practice in their camp, Ryan feels it would heap more pressure on his players.
“I don’t want to be telling the players, don’t tell anyone. They have to come home and tell their mum and dad, you’re playing, you’re not playing, you’re friends, you’re getting texts.
“That’s only putting more pressure on them, I find, for the following week. And everybody’s different, I’m not going to question any manager who wants to put in dummy teams or doesn’t want to put in dummy teams.
“But realistically, I think, to be honest, bar probably Limerick. I think everything gets out of every other dressing room. If you look at Nickie Quaid this year, nobody knew what that was coming. So that shows how tight they are. You can’t keep anything (quiet) in Cork.
“And that’s probably a challenge for all of us, but from my point of view, look, our training sessions aren’t closed door either, really. To a degree, we don’t want to invite 25,000 people down there. We often get a mother coming up with her two kids looking for autographs and she’s sitting on the side of the field.
“As I keep saying, this isn’t my team, this is the Cork public’s team, this is the players’ team more than anything. And look, we try and be as straightforward as we can.”
Ryan doesn’t believe in playing mind games with his team selections, exemplified by starting Brian Hayes in this year’s league final despite his knee injury a couple of weeks previously.
“I don’t believe in pulling strokes, to be honest. We’ll turn up, we’ll man up, we’ll go at you and leave the opposition do the same to us. Look, to be honest, I think it’d be selling a disservice to myself and the selectors and our coach, who’s brilliant, Donal O’Rourke, that we can’t decide that 45 minutes before the game, they’re bringing in this fella, he’s going in centre forward, how is this going to work?
“If we haven’t talked all those scenarios out, we’re not doing our job properly.
Cork’s Diarmuid Healy and manager Pat Ryan celebrate after the Munster final. James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
“I think it’s dishonest to the players themselves. You can talk about the panel and you can talk about the strength of it and the belief that you have in everybody else.
“But if you have a player going home then and he’s telling his mum and dad, ‘Oh, I’m starting’, because he can’t tell him that Seamus Harnedy’s playing before him, how’s he going to come off the bench then and perform?
“We’ve never done it, so if I started doing it now, it’d be alien to what we do. So other fellas will say that’s how they have their teams changed up and they know what’s going on and everybody’s comfortable in what we’re doing.”
After the hammering Cork took against Limerick in the round-robin, Ryan absorbed a key learning in terms of team selection.
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“We probably played a couple of fellas that probably hadn’t an awful lot done.
“It was probably advice I got previously that I probably didn’t listen to that day because you’re going up against Limerick and you want to kind of get as many of your best players on the field.
“You can’t play inter-county hurling if you’re not 100 percent ready. Even from a physical point of view, but even more so from a mental point of view, any bit of doubt in your head will just kill you.
“And if there’s any place where the roof will come in around you if you’ve any bit of doubts, it’s Croke Park.”
“If you have any doubts in Croke Park about your team or players, Croke Park will find you out fairly quickly.”
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Cork's Pat Ryan on team selections: 'I don't believe in pulling strokes'
A FEW DAYS out from their crunch All-Ireland semi-final against Dublin and Pat Ryan is in a straight talking mood when it comes to Cork player availability.
Seamus Harnedy will be absent with a hamstring injury. There is more hope now in the Cork camp that Ger Millierick can force his way into the reckoning and more concern that Cormac O’Brien will have to sit this one out.
“Séamus is definitely out. Ger was back hurling. To be honest, it surprised us a bit. He took a full part last night (Monday) in training.
“When it’s not a leg injury or a back injury or one of those, your hand kind of comes around quickly enough. There’s a bit of strapping on it but he’s in good shape physically. They’ve got a lot of work into him, so he’s probably in the best condition he’s ever been in physically for himself, which is great.
“Cormac O’Brien is a bit of a doubt now as well. It’s a small bit of a quad thing. If you remember back, Cormac did a quad against Clare starting off. He kind of re-injured it again. It’s nothing major. He was on the field a bit last night (Monday) but we were hoping he’d have done a bit more. We’ll see where that lies.”
Having Declan Dalton back in harness is a boost for Cork but Ryan is conscious of the void Harnedy creates by being unavailable.
“Look, to be honest, I don’t think we have anyone on our panel that can replace Seamus.
He’s such a huge player for Cork over the last couple of years. A real warrior spirit in the way he plays. It’s just something that we’ve needed from a ball-wielding ability.
“But Declan being back is a huge addition to us. The team isn’t finalised at the moment with Robbie Flynn going very well, Connolly, Lehane, Shane Kingston, Brian Roche going well. They all played well and we came on in the Munster final.
“Declan obviously has the ability to be able to take long-range threes as well as a huge asset that we probably have missed with Declan out of the team.”
When Cork met Dublin last year at the All-Ireland quarter-final stage, Robert Downey was ruled out through illness which forced Cork into a late pre-match change as Luke Meade started.
In general Ryan has tended to avoid any last minute alterations, his midweek team announcements can be trusted.
If dummy selections were a practice in their camp, Ryan feels it would heap more pressure on his players.
“I don’t want to be telling the players, don’t tell anyone. They have to come home and tell their mum and dad, you’re playing, you’re not playing, you’re friends, you’re getting texts.
“That’s only putting more pressure on them, I find, for the following week. And everybody’s different, I’m not going to question any manager who wants to put in dummy teams or doesn’t want to put in dummy teams.
“But realistically, I think, to be honest, bar probably Limerick. I think everything gets out of every other dressing room. If you look at Nickie Quaid this year, nobody knew what that was coming. So that shows how tight they are. You can’t keep anything (quiet) in Cork.
“And that’s probably a challenge for all of us, but from my point of view, look, our training sessions aren’t closed door either, really. To a degree, we don’t want to invite 25,000 people down there. We often get a mother coming up with her two kids looking for autographs and she’s sitting on the side of the field.
“As I keep saying, this isn’t my team, this is the Cork public’s team, this is the players’ team more than anything. And look, we try and be as straightforward as we can.”
Ryan doesn’t believe in playing mind games with his team selections, exemplified by starting Brian Hayes in this year’s league final despite his knee injury a couple of weeks previously.
“I don’t believe in pulling strokes, to be honest. We’ll turn up, we’ll man up, we’ll go at you and leave the opposition do the same to us. Look, to be honest, I think it’d be selling a disservice to myself and the selectors and our coach, who’s brilliant, Donal O’Rourke, that we can’t decide that 45 minutes before the game, they’re bringing in this fella, he’s going in centre forward, how is this going to work?
“If we haven’t talked all those scenarios out, we’re not doing our job properly.
“I think it’s dishonest to the players themselves. You can talk about the panel and you can talk about the strength of it and the belief that you have in everybody else.
“But if you have a player going home then and he’s telling his mum and dad, ‘Oh, I’m starting’, because he can’t tell him that Seamus Harnedy’s playing before him, how’s he going to come off the bench then and perform?
“We’ve never done it, so if I started doing it now, it’d be alien to what we do. So other fellas will say that’s how they have their teams changed up and they know what’s going on and everybody’s comfortable in what we’re doing.”
After the hammering Cork took against Limerick in the round-robin, Ryan absorbed a key learning in terms of team selection.
“We probably played a couple of fellas that probably hadn’t an awful lot done.
“It was probably advice I got previously that I probably didn’t listen to that day because you’re going up against Limerick and you want to kind of get as many of your best players on the field.
“You can’t play inter-county hurling if you’re not 100 percent ready. Even from a physical point of view, but even more so from a mental point of view, any bit of doubt in your head will just kill you.
“And if there’s any place where the roof will come in around you if you’ve any bit of doubts, it’s Croke Park.”
“If you have any doubts in Croke Park about your team or players, Croke Park will find you out fairly quickly.”
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