Pity the man on the brink of Munster success

Tom Humphries listens as Cork boss Donal O'Grady concentrates onthe Waterford cloud on the horizon rather than the silver lining of victoryover much-favoured Clare

Donal O'Grady leaned back against a wall and let the media wash about him. A perfectionist, one suspects. Nothing left to chance. This day was done. Donal was worrying about the next day already.

"Initial reaction is we won a semi-final of a Munster championship. We're into a final. That's all. We've nothing won yet."

Not the gush of a first-year manager.

"Good display though?" we asked, hoping to cheer him up.

"I think you have to keep it in perspective. If we'd been asked to come up and play a Munster semi-final without two-thirds of our half-back line we wouldn't have been at the races. That's what Clare had to do. You saw yourself in the first half they missed five or six handy scoreable chances from frees and out the field. If McMahon was there, they'd be over the bar. We benefited from the loss of Hoey and McMahon."

Furtively, we glance down the hallway. Maybe we have slipped into a parallel universe and the winning manager is giving the losing quotes. Perhaps Cyril Lyons is down the way whooping it up about the qualifiers. We ask O'Grady if he didn't perhaps think that Wayne Sherlock was a bit good yesterday.

"I don't discuss individual players. It was a team effort. The defence as a unit played well. As did the forwards. The job that has to be done. Clare were on a high after beating Tipp and I think they were a little bit flat today. We may have the same problem. Was that our peak performance of the year, that's the problem we have to deal with it."

We are sympathetic. It must be miserable coaching a team which just bursts into beautiful technicolor on a championship Sunday. The winter had suggested nothing of the sort.

"It was never an ambition to get to the league final. We were looking for a bit of progress. The work ethic was very good but if you win with everyone playing poorly it's as good as winning the other way.

"In a 70-minute match we dominated the first 20. Clare missed five or six easily scoreable chances. We were in trouble for periods. Once or twice they might have got a goal only for hesitancy. The big thing is to be in a Munster final. If you're not in it you can't win it. We have a mountain to climb."

Brimming with compassion for O'Grady's plight, we head towards Diarmuid O'Sullivan, who is so chirpy that the words "media gag" come immediately to mind.

"Badly wanted," he says of the day. "Badly wanted. From a Cork perspective it was fantastic. We knew what we had to do, went about the business from the first minute. We started out six months ago with one objective, to get out of the first round."

For O'Sullivan, a turbulent figure on the turbulent Cork landscape, it was a sweet day. Out in the corner of the park after good times and bad in a more central position, he gave off the air of a man just happy to be there.

"As a full-back line we did well as a whole. The backs did well. We knew after what we saw we'd have to meet fire with fire. Our hurling shone through."

Like the rest of the Cork contingent O'Sullivan already had a firm position taken on Waterford. A position of down on one knee, head bowed in reverence.

"Waterford have had two totally different games, you can see their character and their heart. For us this was just a game we needed to win for ourselves and for the people of Cork. We left ourselves down with a big bang a few times in the past so that was a serious confidence booster. This is my seventh championship season and the first time I've heard during a game The Banks being sung. That's a fierce boost."

Alan Browne, the team captain, had crept up the corridor. He was quietly analysing the afternoon and the things which had shaped it.

"We never let Clare get into a rhythm. Setanta and Joe inside were fabulous. It was a concern we'd no game but we took something from the Tipp-Clare match. We took a lot out of it."

For the older guys, the ones who keep on keeping on, the form of the tyros must have been pleasing bordering on frightening.

"Tom Kenny, Ronan Curran and Setanta," said Browne, tacitly acknowledging the last named is going to become one of those one-name legends like Madonna, "he gave Frank Lohan a torrid time in the corner. Hopefully, the experience will stand to him. That was as high-intensity a game as you'll get."

For the rest of them, it was back to basics. "It's been our tactic to get our physical stuff out of the way. Blocking, hooking, striking on the ground. We knew we'd have it tough against them. They'd blown Tipp off the field. Clare hit them hard from the start. Great to get the win. It was a team performance, harrying, hooking and blocking. We didn't give them a second on the ball. It's great after the last couple of years to be looking forward to a Munster final."

Cyril Lyons's mournful face told its own tale. You spend the winter preparing for Tipperary. You pull it off in the most momentous of circumstances. A few weeks later it matters as little as yesterday's newspapers.

"Ah," he said, "you play as best you can and try and cover all the angles. We knew we couldn't afford a flat day and we had one today. They got all the psychological things early on. "

It was a sorry-for-your-troubles type of gathering. The absence of old friends was noted. Discreetly.

"Anytime you have to make changes they are big losses. Diarmuid tried very hard but it's hard to fill those shoes."

And the cure that never came was lamented. "We needed a goal. We didn't get it."

The qualifiers beckon. Too soon and unappetising. "We are shattered psychologically . . . Physically we are drained. It will be a huge game. A huge challenge getting up for it. Teams that were beaten a while ago will be recharged and fresh."

Cyril, look on the bright side. You could have Donal O'Grady's worries.