BY JOHNNY CAROLAN
WHILE it did not prove to be fatal, there is one blot in this year’s championship campaign for Cork.
Having lost away to Clare and then beaten Tipperary, Pat Ryan’s side went to Limerick after a three-week lay-off. They weren’t just beaten – they lost by 16 points – and nobody would have been able to believe that Limerick had three more games left in the championship and would fail to win any of them.
For Cork, there wasn’t much time for navel-gazing as a must-win clash at home to Waterford loomed. As Ciarán Joyce outlines, management didn’t have to say much to effect a response.
‘There was a graph of how many turnovers we got in the game,’ he says, ‘and you could see every game – you could see against Limerick in 2024 and this amount of turnovers against Limerick in 2025.
‘It was staggering to see how many turnovers were in each game, which gives us a real representation of how hard you work.
‘It kind of hurts as well when you're looking at that and you're just saying, ‘Jeez, that's how bad we were.’
‘It hurts, so we wanted to improve on the wrongs against Waterford.’
Pat Ryan’s side got past the Déise before then overcoming Limerick after a penalty shootout in the Munster final. From there, they had 20 points to spare against Dublin and now sit on the brink of ending Cork’s 20-year wait for the All-Ireland title.
A year ago, they went toe-to-toe with Clare but wound up losing by a point after 90 minutes of hurling.
It was of course tough to take but it can also be an educational experience in terms of this year’s preparation, 23-year-old Joyce believes.
‘I suppose the lead-up to the final last year, there was a lot of hype around the place,’ he says, ‘and trying to keep a lid on it this year and just have laser-focus now for half-three on Sunday.
‘You know, even tickets or all this stuff, just trying to keep a lid on all that now. We'll leave my parents to deal with that.
‘It was my second time only playing in Croke Park, a small thing but new to me. As a young fella, like, you're always learning too and the All-Ireland final was no different to that.
‘I feel like this year we're definitely better-equipped. We've been through it all and, yeah, we're fully ready for it now.’
In the Munster final, Joyce excelled at centre-back, limiting the influence of Limerick’s Cian Lynch. He is almost certain to be wearing number 5 on Sunday with captain Robert Downey – unable to start the Munster final – with 6 on his back.
The Castlemartyr man may be put tagging Tipperary’s Jake Morris in a marking job but, wherever he, Downey and Mark Coleman end up, he has confidence in their adaptability.
‘I think the way in which we play, there's actually not much of a difference between centre-back and wing-back,’ Joyce said.
‘We like to play in the opposition faces and the way teams are playing, players are switching around the place, you could find yourself at six for maybe ten minutes of the game and Rob could be wing-back or whatever.
‘We're always switching, so it’s kind of fairly similar. We enjoy playing anywhere in the half-back line, really.
‘I suppose it's important then that you have trust in the other guy, and there does seem to be that absolute belief in each other.’
