By John Harrington
Eoin Cadogan admits everyone in the Cork camp is ‘pissed off’ with the quality of their performance against Waterford in the Munster SFC Quarter-Final last Saturday.
The Rebels went into the match as hot favourites, but in the end had to dig deep to grind out a one-point win.
“Relief number one that we won and then you'd have been pissed off with the performance as a group,” said Cadogan when asked for his reaction to the game.
“We know ourselves that wasn't a true reflection of the amount of work that was put in over the past few weeks by the management and players.
“You could see yourself that Waterford were very drilled, they set up 14 men behind the ball and they performed it pretty well. It just took longer for us to break down.
“When we did get ahead it was our older guys that were driving it on like Donncha O'Connor, Paul Kerrigan, James Loughrey, these guys were pushing things on.
“Then guys that came on, Barry O'Driscoll, Ian Maguire, they all contributed really well. Definitely relief and definitely a realisation that performance won't be good enough in two weeks time.”
While Cadogan admits that Cork didn’t play as well as they could have, he believes some of the reaction to their performance has been over the top and that Waterford should have gotten more credit for their display.
“Cork supporters I'm sure left very disillusioned on Saturday night and it would have been very hard to blame them,” he says.
“There would have been an expectancy that Cork would have won if you looked at previous history but that's not always the case. I thought Waterford played good football. Anyone who was at it or saw the game, it's a better reflection of the type of game it was.
“Not necessarily, ‘I wasn't at it, I just saw the score, Cork are sh**e’. That's just a layman's view looking at the scoreboard.
“Should we be doing better? Of course we should be doing better. It's not a case of being happy we just won by a point. We're still in a Munster semi-final and that's all that matters. It wasn't pretty but so be it.”
Cadogan missed Saturday’s win over Waterford because of an Achilles injury that has taken longer to come right post-surgery than expected, but he is confident he’ll be fully fit for the Munster semi-final against Tipperary on June 10th.
“Back in training, delighted to be back in," he said. "Had the operation back in August which was a success and then just along the way had a few small issues, niggly injuries.
“It's just a very different dynamic, I think it's my first year in ten years not playing any national league whether it's hurling or football so you can imagine my energy levels are gone through the roof.
“Looking forward getting back out playing or contributing in any shape or form whatever way I can. Good to go yeah.”