MICHAEL SHIELDS HAS done his homework ahead of Saturday night’s Croke Park clash against Dublin.
The Cork skipper is recovering from a medial ligament tear and is unlikely to feature this weekend.
But he still swotted up on the most recent meeting between the counties: last year’s All-Ireland quarter-final which the Dubs won by five points.
He said: “I’ve watched the game in recent times and it’s not all that bad. We created a lot of chances that night. We caused them problems in certain areas.
“It’s just probably fine tuning a lot of things and working on other things this year.
“I don’t think we’ll be far off. That’s my personal opinion.”
Cork made good use of their aerial strength that night, bombarding the Dublin full-back line with high balls and forcing them into mistakes.
But they lost a towering attacking presence in the off-season when Ciaran Sheehan decided to try his hand at Aussie Rules with Carlton.
“I suppose the big plus of that last summer was that Ciaran Sheehan was playing but unfortunately he’s gone over to Oz now and so that’s gone unless we look at putting someone else inside there.
“I suppose it’s something we can think about but we do have some good inside forwards so we don’t really need to limit ourselves.
“It’s all about the management really, what type of ball they want to deliver in.”
Cork have flown out of the traps in Brian Cuthbert’s first season as manager, winning the McGrath Cup and then following that with two wins from two in a perfect start to Division 1.
It’s a promising start for a squad that lost six senior players to retirement over the winter including captain Graham Canty.
Shields was asked to take over the armband and he’s embracing that extra responsibility.
“I’ve had the honour of captaining the side on certain occasions before so to be honest it’s an extra few jobs on the day and that’s the way I look at it.
If you look at the panel as a whole there are plenty of other fellas who can fit into the role as much as me. Luckily enough I was the one who got the armband this year.
“There are young lads who are going to come in who look up to you and look up to certain members of the panel, and we’re the lads who have to lead the way.
“I suppose when I came on board there was Graham Canty, Noel O’Leary, Paudie Kissane, Alan Quirke, all these guys who were really good fellas with their heads well and truly screwed on.
“You try to model yourself on them. They led the way for us so it’s up to our crew who won All-Irelands in 2010 and 2007 with the U21s, a lot of us have responsibility now to be leaders any way we can.”
