{"id":571110,"date":"2026-07-06T06:53:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T06:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/571110\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T06:53:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T06:53:12","slug":"cork-minor-boss-keith-ricken-i-had-a-dream-we-were-going-to-win-by-three-points","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/571110\/","title":{"rendered":"Cork minor boss Keith Ricken: ‘I had a dream we were going to win by three points’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Keith Ricken had seen this before. The Cork<\/a> minor manager had been at the helm of teams that won county titles, a Sigerson Cup and, in 2019, an All-Ireland U20 title for the county.<\/p>\n

No, he had actually seen this game before. Lived it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew that this game would go down to the wire. I actually played this game twice,\u201d he said after his side\u2019s three-point comeback win over Tyrone<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a dream we were going to win by three points coming down the home straight. I kid you not. I woke up in a bag of sweat. This is my second time playing it in a week. I\u2019m not going to watch it again.<\/p>\n

\u201cTyrone were All-Ireland champions and you can see why, their production line, their U20s. I know all the Tyrone lads, we\u2019re trying to model ourselves on them. They gave us a lesson last year [in the quarter-final]. You can see what they\u2019re doing right and we\u2019re trying to emulate that. I\u2019m just glad it came off today.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t just that Cork won by three points in that dream.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They had won by overturning a Tyrone lead as well so maybe that was in his mind as a source of comfort when his lads returned to the dressing-room at half-time seven points behind.<\/p>\n

That gap had already stretched out to nine at one point, and it would return to that margin early in the second-half, but Ricken had urged his team to keep plugging away, to get that point or find that second wind that could turn things in their favour.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey tore into it and if that game went on longer they could have won by even more.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He had detected a flatness in his players earlier that left them playing catch-up. This wasn\u2019t his first All-Ireland final but it was for every teenager in a red jersey and that slow start made the manner of this one all the more pleasing.<\/p>\n

By the end, Ricken felt they were playing as freely as if they were going through their paces in a training session back home. They embraced the occasion and the game and what both demanded of them and got past a superb Tyrone side in the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were moments there, we turned over a few kickouts. \u00c9anna [Lynch] got a couple of superb blocks. When I saw that second block \u2013 we were seven points down I think – I said to the boys: \u2018lads, I think we\u2019re in\u2019. That was the catalyst. His blocking gives people hope and energy.<\/p>\n

\u201cRory Twohig inside in goal was superb. His kick-outs, his saves, which is predominantly what he is there for, he didn\u2019t buckle and it didn\u2019t faze him when a kick went wrong. He went back in. We\u2019d chatted about that: kicks can go wrong, but your basics must be right.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was delighted to see Gabriel [Oronsaye] coming back onto the pitch. Conor Downing, struggling in the first-half, but dug deep, as any Beara man would, in the second-half. He dug into a recess I don\u2019t think anyone else has, to drag something out. He finished superbly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe boys up front: I think Alex [O\u2019Herlihy] got a goal but I don\u2019t know with all the excitement and lads jumping in front of me. Our subs made a great difference. Great belief in themselves. The whole team were united.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Keith Ricken had seen this before. The Cork minor manager had been at the helm of teams that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[76],"tags":[1263,4488,16181,24,18,19,17,132],"class_list":["post-571110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-cork-sport","tag-irish-examiner-instagram","tag-irish-examiner-instagram-sport","tag-cork-gaa","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116871718713322986","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}