All-Ireland SHC Final Cork reactionOne official said Cork's warlike early entrance onto the pitch almost left several of Croke Park's sturdy doors unhinged. However, their return to the dressing room was more akin to a funeral procession.

When you come so close that you can smell the victory, as they genuinely could midway through the second half, defeat is almost unbearable. In the slow march off the field a haunted look was etched across each face of this young team.

Setanta Ó hAilpín's especially. Just as he wore his emotions on his sleeve during the contest he held nothing back on departure from the pitch. Clear devastation. They may have been underdogs but defeat certainly wasn't contemplated.

Both the captain and the manager faced the media in the immediate aftermath of the game and gave a very clear view of the performance; the chances weren't taken.

"It's simple enough to analyse I suppose," said Donal O'Grady. "We didn't play well enough in the first-half. We played with a bit of a breeze, we had 11 wides. I suppose four or five of those were good scoreable chances. A few frees, a few pots that should've gone over the bar."

Alan Browne reiterated the view that failure to produce the scores in the first-half proved their undoing yet he couldn't give any solutions.

"How do you explain it? I mean fellas weren't shooting the ball wide on purpose. Just, the ball wasn't going over, maybe fellas just didn't take the second to think, or whatever.

"It's certainly not an excuse, but I think the sun also there in the first-half was a factor, shining down on fellas. It was shining from behind the goal."

Little elaboration was needed, they displayed a concise and honest attitude - a hallmark of this Cork outfit all year long - in reflecting on the loss.

"Every game is different, you know, some days things go over the bar," said O'Grady "The Munster final against Waterford we came out after half-time and everything we hit went over. Today, I think a little bit of the confidence drifted away from people with long-range shots, they didn't quite hit them with the conviction that they should have, but look: That's the way things go."

The Cork second-half revival wasn't enough to make up for the earlier indiscretions.

"Our best spell was in the second-half, certainly," said Browne "We were motoring there, we were six points down at half-time and at one stage we were leading by one point. I mean to turn around like that against Kilkenny; it obviously showed we upped our game. We played well but it wasn't enough in the end."

On reflection, it kept coming back to what might have been. When they started to turn the screw on Kilkenny, the extra breaks never materialised. The Setanta Ó hAilpín point, that wasn't, ended up being fairly vital in O'Grady's book.

"There was a chance in the second-half where Setanta hit a great shot, I was convinced it went over the bar.

"But when you go ahead and get a couple of chances, having come back from six points down, if you go ahead (further), I think it would have been very difficult to catch us.

"But look, in the heat of the hunt we weren't good enough to do that. We had put in a fierce effort, you couldn't fault any of the lads because they gritted their teeth in the second-half and they drove into the game from the word go, you know you can't keep up that pace for the whole 35 minutes.

"There was a time when Kilkenny would come back and they got the vital scores at the end to give themselves a bit of a cushion."

A few months down the road the campaign will be looked back upon as a success. As a veteran of Cork hurling Browne was willing to see the positive side of the year.

"That's what we are reminding ourselves. Nobody gave us a chance even against Clare or against Waterford. We won the Munster championship, which is something we have not done since 2000.

"It's a relatively successful year,." he concludes.

The pain is intense now but it will subside, just in time for next year.