CORK EXITED THE 2015 hurling race yesterday after suffering a heavy defeat against Galway and the spotlight now falls on the future of manager Jimmy Barry-Murphy.
The Cork boss has another year left to run on the two-year extension that he was handed last year. Barry-Murphy began his second spell as Rebels boss at the outset of the 2012 season.
The issue of Barry-Murphy’s future plans came up in yesterday’s post-match press conference.
“I can’t wait for next year, work it out ye’re selves,” replied Barry-Murphy.
“I believe there’s a great future for the Cork players. I’ll leave it at what I said there now.”
Barry-Murphy was queried as to whether Cork should have changed their tactics yesterday.
We were accused earlier in the year of having no tactics, then we tried a different system of defensive play.
“Every game you play you try to assess what’s good for the team and the panel of players available to you. As I said, the lads have given us everything over the last four years.
“We’ve been competing at the highest level but just fallen short.”
The Cork manager had no qualms about accepting Galway were superior.
“In fairness to the players, they tried their hearts out there but we just weren’t good enough. We were comprehensively outplayed all over the field.
“You just feel that we made a bit of a fight in the second half for a period, but it was a lost cause at times.
“We played Clare here and won a great game. Clare are a very good team, but today we just fell short of the standard we’d like to set, and Galway were comprehensively better than us all over the field.”
Less of the chat about the attendance and more about the great game that evolved in the most awful conditions. Hats off to the players. Tremendous commitment shown.
The pubs and hotels in Dublin must have been hoping for a Limerick win today. 35 or 40 thousand Limerick fans would have made a weekend of it in the capital for the final. The same doesn’t apply to KK as they are there nearly every year.
If 30-40k Kilkenny fans went to a game that would be about 50% of the population. So probably a 25-30% of the population is not half bad turn out!
Show me the stats to back that up or are you just another anti Kk griper?
I’m not anti KK in any way. If u read my contributions on other threads relating to today’s match u would see that. It’s just perfectly understandable … What’s rare is wonderful – in recent decades Limerick average one all Ireland appearance every 8 or 9 years. For Kilkenny it’s almost as common as Christmas.
Not even 50,000 at today’s game!!!
Wayne – u are aware that finals always attract larger attendances than finals?! People living abroad, those struggling financially etc will come for finals where it wouldn’t be realistic (or affordable) to come for semi also. Strange comment …
* finals always attract higher attendance than semis
Wow really thanks for that nugget of wisdom! 190,000 population between today’s 3 counties, and then neutrals! I was there today and I’m a Dub. Attendances down so far this summer by 50-60 thousand across all games.
GAA should be looking at free kids tickets for weaker hurling countys for days like today. Or hold today’s game in Semple instead reducing costs for fans
U were there today, congrats … it probably cost u approx €35 between ticket and getting bus/luas. Treble that amount at least, for someone travelling from Limerick or a few hundred €€ if the wife and kids were with u … Get real Wayne !
Pay attention and read what I suggested 42,000 today, would Semple not have been a better location?
Semi finals and finals always take place in Croke Park. As a Dub u should know that – Teams and their fans know that … If today’s game had been in Thurles the attendance would maybe have been bigger .. But only marginally.
& the costs to the fans attending would have been??? Lower :)
Send an email/write a letter to Peter McKenna or Sean O Neill and ask them to put the hurling semi final(s) on in Thurles and let me know how that works out for u ….
Limerick (City & County) alone has a population of over 160k, so the 3 counties together would have a lot more than 190k. Saying that I was a little disappointed with today’s attendance, 16k down on last year’s.