IT MUST feel like a lonely road at times being a Cork footballer. Three leagues in three years was met here with blithe indifference, their travelling support probably numbering no more than 10 per cent of the 22,827.

Even after the final whistle went, Noel O’Leary was more intent on carrying on a niggling to-and-fro with Mayo wing-forward Kevin McLaughlin than celebrating another national title. Cork didn’t need this as much as Mayo yet they played as though they wanted it more.

Conor Counihan would have welcomed a bigger following but he accepts there’s not much he can do about it.

“We’ve a small group of people and they’re important people to us,” he said afterwards.

“There are people who inspire us like Joanne O’Riordan who sent us a text before the game today so it doesn’t matter whether it’s five or 50, we’re doing it for those people and for the team themselves. That’s always been the way, that’s life. I’d hate to see it if we were unsuccessful!”

For Cork, this was a pit-stop. They were physical without the ball and efficient with it.

After giving up a slightly careless four-point margin at the break, they had it almost wiped out within three minutes of the resumption, purely through clever use of the strong wind at their backs.

For Counihan, it was nice to see his side go and do what they needed to after the early wobble.

“Particularly the second half we’d be well pleased with,” he said. “The first half was disappointing. Mayo played well but we lacked intensity and turned over a lot of ball. We did a lot of silly stuff. But in fairness to the group they rallied in the second, got a bit of luck with the two goals and goals win matches.”

James Horan could have made excuses afterwards, for there was at least one ready-made. From a certain angle, the game might have been seen to have turned on the incident in the 55th minute when the non-award of a free in front of the Cork posts led to Aidan Walsh’s goal at the other end. Horan didn’t take the pass though.

“It was an important time in the game alright, no doubt about that,” he said. “But I think over the course of the game, Cork probably deserved it.

“We didn’t play to the level we can and we’d be disappointed about that. But even with that, we didn’t play well in the first half and we were still four points up. Cork had a good start to the second half but we hung in there and if we’d got the rub of the green and a few decisions we would have been there or thereabouts. But overall, the game was disappointing and I don’t think we played at the tempo we can play at.

“Cork were strong today. They were very good. We ran into tackles quite a bit and they were very strong so we turned over the ball. That was a big factor.”

Did ye get pushed around a bit? “Yeah, I think so yeah. We did. We made a couple of good runs and ran into traffic and we weren’t strong enough to get through it or to play the ball back and Cork got a lot of soft frees that way. That gave them momentum when we were trying to get back into the game. So yeah, from a strength and conditioning point of view we’re a long way back. Cork are a big team and we’ve plenty of work to do there.”