BY JOHNNY CAROLAN
THE 16-point loss suffered by Cork against Limerick at TUS Gaelic Grounds three weeks ago matched the county’s previous worst championship defeats to the Shannonsiders.
In both 1996 and in the 2021 All-Ireland final, the margin pertained as at the end of last month’s clash. However, in contrast to the other two occasions, Cork went into the round-robin clash as favourites – inasmuch as such a tag counts for something – seen as the likeliest side to end Limerick’s run of six straight Munster titles.
A win over Waterford a week later means that they can still do that in Saturday’s final back at the Ennis Road venue (6pm), but they will have to produce something special, as Mark Coleman is aware.
‘I think we just met them on a very good day and we were probably maybe five or ten percent off,’ he says, ‘but it looks like you might as well be 60 or 70 percent off if you're five percent off against them. They'll take you apart.
‘It's good to be able to go back up and rectify it and that it wasn't fatal.
‘We’ve played it on many occasions where we were off it and we were knocked out of the championship, so it's good to get those learnings and be able to bring it forward into the championship.’
Coleman is in the minority of the Cork squad that goes into the game having previously won Munster medals, a key part of the sides that beat Clare in the finals of 2017 and 2018. Did he expect to be waiting so long to take part in the occasion again?
‘No, certainly not at the time,’ he says.
‘It seemed like it was, I suppose, for my career, anyway, it was a great start, like, and you think it was going to happen the whole time, but it's great to be back in another one.
‘You kind of probably took it for granted at the time and didn't really appreciate it, so it's nice to be back.’
The Blarney man is also finding it nice to be back in the starting 15, having been on the bench for the Allianz HL final win over Tipperary. Hampered by injury during the spring, he was overtaken by Cormac O’Brien, only for the Newtownshandrum man to then pick up an injury before the championship opener against Clare. Coleman feels that the competition for places drives everyone, though.
‘A hundred percent, yeah, and I've definitely benefited from myself, personally,’ he says.
‘I was out of the team for the league final, and I suppose, unluckily for Cormac, he just picked up an injury before the Clare game, he probably would have been starting out as well.
‘Something Pat always says, the next man up, and it’s just about trying to take the opportunity. There's probably five fellas for every line on the pitch, minimum – even more, going into the depth of the panel.
‘You saw we had three or four fellas injured for the Waterford game, and we had three or four started, another new three or four came on, that strength in depth is important.
‘When you're training, no matter who you're marking, you're marking a top-class forward, it's very difficult training around here, to be honest. It has to be beneficial, driving fellas on.’
Ideally, it will take them on to more silverware, first on Sunday and then ideally more down the line.
‘That's it, just look forward from now on,’ Coleman says.
‘Our goal at the start of the year really was to get out of Munster and we've achieved that now, the added bonus of being into a Munster final.
‘Just looking forward now, take the learnings from the last game, from the championship as a whole we've a lot of learnings, in terms of playing with a man up, playing with a man down, we've played against gale-force breezes, we've got hammered, we've been winning well, we've had it all really!
‘We've a lot of learnings to take, so we're just looking forward now and trying to put a performance in the next day.’
