Pat Ryan: I am sick of coming in here and talking about hollow victories

A four-game Munster SHC losing streak came to an end as Cork came good late on to defeat Limerick in an epic clash at SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh on Saturday night.

After losing four matches by an aggregate of seven points, the Rebels came out on the right side of a tight encounter and manager Pat Ryan hailed the composure of his players in kick-starting their season as they won by 3-28 to 3-26.

“I am sick of coming in here and talking about hollow victories,” he said.

“We have had a lot of those games over the last two years – tonight we showed great heart to get over the line against a savage team that never say die. Even though we were seven or eight points up we knew that they would come back at us.

We answered a lot of their scores when they got them.”

First-half goals from Séamus Harnedy and Shane Barrett helped Cork into a 2-15 to 1-10 half-time lead. Limerick are renowned as a second-half team though and, with Séamus Flanagan finding the net twice to go with his strike in the opening period, they pushed four ahead.

Cork clawed it back to two points before Shane Kingston was dragged down by Kyle Hayes in injury time, referee Seán Stack deeming it to be denial of a goalscoring opportunity as he awarded a penalty and black-carded Hayes.

Patrick Horgan converted from the 20m line and Brian Hayes made the game safe. Ryan expected a Limerick onslaught but backed his players to deal with it.

“Yes, we spoke about that all week, we knew it was going to come,” he said.

“They have five All-Irelands in six years, how many times they have been beaten in the last few years – they are a fantastic team and they showed that out there again today and it took a herculean effort from our lads but that will give us great confidence going forward but we have Tipperary now in eight days and it will have been a waste of time here beating Limerick here tonight if we can’t beat Tipperary.

VITAL

“That might not even be enough to get us through then but we need victories and that was a vital victory for us.”

While Cork had come in to the match on the back of losses to Waterford and Clare, there were bright spots in the latter that could be harnessed.

“You knew you were coming in with some negativity and pressure around,” Ryan said.

“We were very disappointed with the Waterford game, we knew going down that that was going to be a huge game. Waterford are a very, very good team, they were being written off and they were in the long grass for us.

“We didn’t perform as well as we did and they played well. That was disappointing.

“We played very well against Clare down here but you’re not going to beat Clare when you’re down to 14 men, you’re just not going to do it.

“That’s what we did after, we really looked at that 55, 60 minutes where we played well. We showed lads some clips of the heart they showed down to 14 men to come back into that game.

But it matters nought unless we can go out next week and get a result against Tipperary.”

When asked about the penalty, Limerick manager John Kiely instead pointed to Cork’s quick restart leading to Shane Kingston gaining possession and forcing Kyle Hayes into the foul that led to him being black-carded.

“I haven’t seen that [Hayes’s foul on Kingston], I have no comment to make,” he said.

“My issue was more the other end of the field. We scored a point, and we got punished because the ball was pucked out literally as the ball went over the bar. The issue wasn’t at the top end of the field, it was at the other end.

“But anyway, it is what it is. That shouldn’t be the talking point of the game."