IAN O'RIORDANfinds the vanquished camp mystified as to why they came up short again against their great rivals

IT’S SOMETIMES forgotten that the most common phobia in the world is stage fright. You walk into the spotlight. Suddenly you’re frightened. And so you freeze. Cork didn’t necessarily freeze in Croke Park yesterday but something about walking onto the All-Ireland stage and seeing Kerry generates a crippling fear. The old ghost was back to haunt them.

That may not explain why Cork lost a game that on any other day they could have won. But there are no explanations for ghosts either. You don’t have to believe in ghosts to see them. Sure, Cork believed this was a game they would win, that they’d done everything possible to win. In the end they’d no real explanation for what went wrong. Now, it hardly matters.

“I don’t know,” said manager Conor Counihan, who sat ashen-faced as if he’d just woken from his worst nightmare. In many ways he had. “I think I’d have to take time to step back and reflect on that.

“There’s an awful lot that happens out there in 70 minutes of football. It’s very difficult to analyse it down to one particular thing. I certainly find that. You’re dragged into the emotion of things, so we’ll look at it over the next few days. But the reality is, lads, it won’t change the result.”

So we try to analyse it for him: Cork got a great start but couldn’t maintain it; they missed too many scoring chances; they let Kerry right back into the game, particularly in the first half.

“There was a stage when we had opportunities,” admitted Counihan. “Had we taken them we could have put more pressure on Kerry. It certainly was a crucial period. Obviously when you get a good start like that you’d like to build on it. Maybe at some stage during that we felt ‘yeah, this is going to be our day’ – and maybe we did take our eye off the ball. All of a sudden Kerry were back in the hunt, and then went ahead of us.

“We had some difficulty getting hold of the ball, and probably took some bad options when we had the ball. We were running quite well in the first half, or at least the early minutes. We probably stopped the running game, played a bit more direct, and you know, Kerry seemed to handle that a bit better.

“Obviously, if we’d held the thing a bit more we’d have had a better chance. Again we’d the opportunities there early in the second half. So there were a number of areas at different times.

“ But it’s all about doing the business on the day. Taking your chances. And Kerry did that better than us.”

There was an underlining sense Cork let their chances slip more than Kerry took theirs – and ultimately they contributed to their own downfall. It certainly wasn’t Kerry’s most impressive All-Ireland win in the collection of 36.

“I suppose it is,” he admitted, accepting Cork did let opportunity slip. “But you equally have to credit the opposition, in terms of the pressure that they apply to you. I suppose there’s a bit of both in it.”

Cork still had their chances: Daniel Goulding’s great chance of a second Cork goal, which summoned a big save from Diarmuid Murphy.

“Sure, goals are important in critical stages like that,” agreed Counihan, “but fair play to Diarmuid. He stood up and did his job. I think again it was opportunities that we missed. And we let them back into the game. They were the critical factors.”

Counihan denied his team lacked belief. They’d beaten Kerry before this summer and had no reason not to believe they could beat them again: “In terms of belief, the reality is when you come up here for an All-Ireland final it’s 15 against 15. It’s 50-50. Both teams obviously have serious belief . . . There can be only one victor. And today that was Kerry.”

And he didn’t think Cork had left their All-Ireland performance in the semi-final against Tyrone.

“Had we got the few scores in the second half and pulled away and won the game everyone would be saying the Tyrone game was good for us. You can toss those things around for eternity. The reality is . . . we were beaten in an All-Ireland final, and that’s very disappointing.

“And when you lose an All-Ireland final at any stage it’s a serious setback. My thoughts just go out to every one of our players. They’ve given everything to that Cork jersey, and come up short. But I’d be still very proud of each and every one of them.”

One of those players, Graham Canty, looked just as shaken as his manager, and just as bereft of any explanation for what went wrong. At half-time, said Canty, he felt Cork were still well in it.

“We were only two points down. We had played poor for the last 15 minutes of the first half. After starting brightly. But the lads were eager to get back out there, knowing we hadn’t really performed. We wanted to tack on a few scores, but there was no panic. Lads were fairly content, going into the start of the second half.

“We were creating the chances. We just weren’t taking them. If we’d taken maybe half of them it would have been more settling.

“But we were on top for that phase of the game, at least creating chances. Maybe if we weren’t creating the chances you’d be questioning whether the belief was there. There is savage belief in this team. I don’t think anyone can question that,” he added.

“We started well and seemed to dominate for a while around the middle. If we’d stayed on top for another while, who’d have known? But Kerry are always going to come back. They’re a good side. You’re not going to stay on top of them for long.”

Perhaps arriving through the ‘front door’ we suggest had done Cork no favours? “We played well throughout the year. Maintained the form and focus. So I don’t think it did us any harm.”

So no real explanation. No hard excuses. But Cork will seek explanation throughout the winter months. The old ghost will keep coming back to haunt them.

“There was a stage when we had opportunities,” admitted Counihan. “Had we taken them we could have put more pressure on Kerry. It certainly was a crucial period. Obviously when you get a good start like that you’d like to build on it.