Jimmy Barry-Murphy hasn't seen too many days like this. Days when Cork came to Croke Park and lost every battle and sent their supporters streaming for the exits with 10 minutes left on the clock. He sits behind a desk below the Hogan Stand and tries to wrap words around it but it's a grim business.
“I just think on the day we were comprehensively outplayed in a number of positions on the pitch – and against a team of Tipperary’s quality, you’re not going to win the game in that situation.”
Someone throws him a handy ball with the excuse of the long lay-off since the Munster final. This will be the 10th season in a row that the Munster champions don't win the All Ireland, so we say that maybe there's something in that. JBM doesn't bite.
“I don’t know, really, it’s too soon to look at it. I’m not going to use the lay-off as an excuse. I felt coming into the game we were in good shape – training had gone really well. The Munster final win we felt would be a boost to our confidence and we would build on that. But, just on the day, we weren’t at the races.”
Fundamentally, it was a day when they did a huge amount wrong and very little right. Nothing else to say, really.
‘Shocking’
“Ten wides in the first half was shocking. It was very, very poor at times in situations that we’ve normally taken our chances. We would have been in a much healthier position at half-time if we’d taken our chances. That eroded confidence, certainly. Free-taking was a problem as well. Different things didn’t help us today.
“I thought at two points down at half time flattered us. The wides eroded confidence, heads seemed to drop because of that.
“A lot of our players were comprehensively outplayed on the day. I think when you’re playing a team of Tipperary’s quality and the ball is being cleared out by backs of their quality, physicality seemed to be a problem for us as well.
‘Much stronger’
“They were much stronger on the ball, they seemed to harass us as well. When the ball is coming in to your defence as readily as it was, you’re always going to concede and that was the problem today.”
And yet they went in just two points down at the break. There was ample time to turn it around. But nothing changed.
“Honestly, I thought we were in a good position at half-time. There was a bit of a breeze blowing into Hill 16 that I thought would favour us.
“If we could rectify a few of the wides we had in the first half I thought we were well in the game.
“We were flattered to be in that position– a lot of our players not playing to the standard they would normally play and we were still only two points down.
“We were pleasantly surprised to be in that position, but the second half didn’t get any better, to be honest with you.”
