O’Connor: Cork a real danger

JACK O’Connor believes Cork are ‘dangerous’ opponents and to see Saturday’s Munster semi-final. The Kerry boss has had many duels with their old rivals through the years. Cork have struggled in recent years but the Kingdom boss knows these games bring an X factor.

‘I’m long enough on the road to never underestimate Cork, going back almost 20 years back to ’06 [when] they drew with us in Killarney and beat us in Cork. The same in ’09 – in both those years we won All-Irelands so I never under estimate Cork. ‘Even last year when we went up in the [All-Ireland] group stage up to Páirc Ui Chaoimh, there was very little in that game, possibly the penalty swung it for us, and there was only two points in it. That's the Cork we will be expecting Saturday evening.’

O’Connor was busy with Kerry’s own league commitments to worry about Cork earlier in the year but points out Cork ‘finished strong’ in their Division 2 campaign. ‘Cork finished strongly in the league, and kicked 2-16 against Armagh, who are a very decent team, and really a Division 1 team. We know Cork will get a lot of confidence from that, and they won’t fear coming to Killarney.

‘From what I gathered they were unlucky in some of the early games they lost, they had created a lot of goal chances but didn’t take them all, but they certainly finished strong. I can’t say I watched them very closely but certainly the way they finished strong and got a bit of momentum at the end of the league would make them dangerous coming to Killarney.’
O’Connor has some injury worries coming into Saturday’s battle in Killarney, with the likes of Ruairi Murphy and Stefan Okunbor long-term inju- ries, while he says Jason Foley is a ‘big loss to us’.

‘Joe O’Connor is back training this week. He should be okay. Cillian Burke [hamstring] is back. Brian O Beaglaoich had a bit of a bug recently. His injuries have cleared up. Dylan Geaney, Tom O’Sullivan, Tony Brosnan, they’re all back training. They’ve been back training for a couple of weeks. Everyone that’s training is in contention.’