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 7 September 2004 Irish Independent | |||
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Donal O'Grady wants the record put straight. At some stage over the winter months strong word began to trickle from Cork that they were licking their wounds begrudgingly.
The perception was that they had left the 2003 All-Ireland final behind them - Kilkenny didn't come again and win it.
It was suggested that even O'Grady himself 'privately' felt his Rebel team were better on the day. Not so. Twelve months on and O'Grady feels the Cork view on that final has been grossly misrepresented.
The O'Grady mantra is simple and straightforward. "Teams deserve to win games because they score more than the opposition. There are a lot of people around the country saying we were whingeing that we were the better team on the day in last year's All-Ireland final. We weren't the better team on the day. It's a simple as that. I want to put that on record. The team that scores more deserves to win because scoring is the name of the game," stated O'Grady.
"If you have 90 per cent of the possession and you lose there's no point in saying we played well but we lost. Winning is the issue and to win you have to score more. That's what we didn't do."
Consequently, O'Grady won't be putting much emphasis on the aesthetic approach that Cork will take into Sunday's re-match. He cares little about the journey as long as the destination is the right one.
"If Cork win by seven points to six and it's the worst game of the century well there won't be anyone down in Cork cribbing on Monday night," he said. "I'm sure it's the same in Kilkenny. If they win by four points to three there won't be too many complaints either. That's sport, that's the way it is."
O'Grady is loath to talk of last year and recoils from comparisons between the 2003 and 2004 Rebel vintages. He finds talk of improvement between years as "subjective" as it is to sit down and pick the best Cork team.
Setanta Ó hAilpín is an obvious loss but the "height and strength" that Brian Corcoran brings and the restructured midfield that has brought the athletic talents of Tom Kenny and Jerry O'Connor together constitutes clear progress.
"It's hard to say if we're stronger than last year. You can only gauge your strengths from the opposition you play. I feel our form last year was just as impressive as it has been but all that talk is very subjective. This is the 2004 team trying to win the 2004 championship."
O'Grady never considered that Kilkenny's Leinster championship upset against Wexford would unduly distort the championship picture.
"I had no great interest in what was happening in the Leinster championship. Kilkenny lost with the last puck of the game if the referee didn't add on two extra minutes they were Leinster champions because they would have beaten Offaly easily enough," he reflected.
"It makes nice headlines and nice copy because something different happened. But we all know the realities of life. We all knew Kilkenny would be back."
He suspected his own team would quickly pick themselves up to after losing to Waterford and they did with a storming second half display against Tipperary in Killarney.
"The game against Tipp was important. I welcomed getting back into the 'real championship' where if you lost you were out. I said to the players the real championship begins now. The second half particularly the last 10 minutes when we drove through was pleasing."
The easy passage they have enjoyed to an All-Ireland final since then doesn't concern O'Grady now. "I think everyone going into the quarter-final draw had their fingers crossed they were going to get Antrim and that's no disrespect to them. That's a fact of the matter and they'll accept it.
"The win over Wexford was something totally unexpected. I was certainly expecting a much tougher game and I was amazed they fell away. They were quite poor on the day.
"There was no great mystery to what we did. Hurling is simple enough. If you get to the ball first you'll beat most teams. That's the game as far as I see it. There was no great competitive aspect to it after 15 minutes. It was easy enough for us to do things and I wish it was that way all the time!"
But in Kilkenny he knows Cork face the best team in the land. "We've all seen headlines like 'Top Cats'. They are the top team in Ireland and they have proved it over the last two years. I'm not being disingenuous.
"They've won every way since losing to Wexford and the way they hung in and dug out a couple of results against Clare impressed me. Until they are beaten no team can ever say they should have beaten them."
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