Cork manager Ben O’Connor believes that moves to ‘cleanse’ hurling are taking the manliness out of the game.
Speaking after Saturday night’s Allianz Hurling League Division 1A win over Galway, O’Connor praised his team’s ability to turn things around after a slow start – but he noted the difficulty in getting messages in to them, in any case.
“That’s themselves,” he said, when asked if the management needed to question players’ desire to improve.
We are only here to support them fellas, them fellas know what they want. They know what they are doing.
“You lay out something, they go and do it. You see in the second half, as I said, you can’t get messages out to the field. It isn’t right, in my opinion, that you can’t.
“Training all week, you can tell fellas this and tell them that, then you go into a match and can’t get information in. They have to figure out themselves inside.
“In fairness, most of them they come up with that.”
Cork’s manager Ben O’Connor and his backroom team in Galway. Picture: INPHO/James Crombie
The follow-up question asked O’Connor if he would like to see a return to the maor foirne acting as a ‘runner’, passing instructions to players.
“We’re gone like soccer, aren’t we?” he said.
“Black cards, red cards, yellow cards, technical areas – we’re following that game.
“Look, that is the fellas above trying to cleanse hurling. That is what they are trying to do, if you want to be fair about it.
“They don’t any dust-up, they don’t want any bit of blood spilt, they don’t want a hurley broke, they want to make it a nice game for ‘my little Johnny’ at home.
“Genuine hurling people don’t want that. They want a good, hard physical game – no-one is hurt when it is played that way. There wasn’t a dirty stroke pulled outside there tonight. No-one got hurt.
That is higher above, they are trying to take the manliness out of the game, in my opinion.”
Cork certainly had to show their physicality to get back into a game that threatened to go away from them in the first half.
Down by seven points on two occasions, they managed to reel off five points in a row coming up to half-time to trail by just one. Prior to that, though, Galway provided a far tougher challenge than Waterford had in the opening-round 14-point win.
Cork’s Brian Hayes celebrates scoring the opening goal against Galway at Pearse Stadium. Picture: INPHO/James Crombie
“Last Sunday, we were on the ball straightaway,” O’Connor said.
“I suppose that was the pressure we were under last Sunday, for the first 20 minutes we were able to do as we liked, whereas we weren’t tonight.
“We were under a bit of pressure – to be fair about it, Galway should have been out of sight. They had a lot of wides.
“We chatted with the lads at half-time, they weren’t happy with what they came up with. We rectified it in the second half – a dogged win, exactly what you want in the league.
Good fighting attitude out of fellas. It was nice to get the two points at the end of the day.”
Of Cork’s tally, 13 points – all from play – came from the half-forward line of captain Darragh Fitzgibbon, Shane Barrett and Séamus Harnedy.
The latter was playing his first game under O’Connor and chipped in with four points from play in a performance that belied his age.
“Séamus is what, 35 years of age?” the manager said.
“What drives him only the young fellas at training. We are delighted to get as long as we did out of Séamie, that probably wasn’t the plan.
“He was going so well and we said we’d leave him inside. That will stand to him next week again.”