THIS WAS a phoney war. A few bullets whistling over the guard tower before a full-on summer assault can be launched. Winning the National Football League Division Two title doesn’t actually mean anything for Cork and Monaghan anymore.

So, at half pace, we got a Cork team sprinkling the contest with points and a goal from James Masters. In stark contrast, Monaghan were unrecognisable from the team that has almost harassed Kerry into disaster two years running at Croke Park. The main contributors are the same so maybe they were saving themselves for Derry on May 24th.

A team performing so far off expected standards, even in an irrelevant contest like yesterday, is always a concern. Monaghan manager Séamus McEnaney admitted a dramatic improvement is required before his charges arrive at Celtic Park.

McEnaney normally refuses to shy away from the issues of the day but he was too concerned by his players’ lack of interest to even bother tackling the now defunct yellow-card issues which saw Damien Freeman become the second last player to be replaced under the experimental sanctions for a neck tackle. And this despite some almost identical previous “tackles” that only prompted frees and black cards from referee Syl Doyle.

“The only thing that frustrated me today was how we performed. We didn’t perform to any standard we’d like to perform to and that’s something we go to work on. We’ll be back training Tuesday night. We’ve Derry in the championship in four weeks’ time and we prepared quite well for today’s game but it just didn’t happen. We didn’t perform on the day. Too many players didn’t perform up to scratch.

“It’s disappointing to come up to Croke Park and perform like that there.”

The man refused to leave with a cloud of negativity floating around his team. “We got promotion and that is good for us . . . we can’t forget the positives from that we set out last January to play as many players as we could in the National Football League. We did play 29 and we feel we have got strength in depth. We ended up with a good few of our experienced players in the dugout today and these fellas know it is not acceptable, along with a number of players who didn’t perform to the expected standard were still on the field.”

For Cork manager Conor Counihan the same age-old challenge is on the horizon and those unspoken rivals allowed the Corkman relate to Monaghan’s plight yesterday.

“To be honest about it I don’t think Monaghan played as good as they can play. That was a disappointment from our point of view because we probably could’ve found out a lot more about ourselves but, look it, we know well enough about coming to Croke Park ourselves and maybe not performing. I don’t think Monaghan did themselves justice by their own high standards.

“We’re going into championship now, the tempo is going to be much, much higher.”

April victories in Croke Park become redundant very quickly. Nor can the next opposition be seen as high tempo. Dungarvan on May 24th against Waterford being a mere precursor to the serious business, which thankfully is not far off now.