Tipp blew us away - Ryan

By Stephen Barry

Cork manager Pat Ryan pointed to his sides “terrible” energy as he attempted to diagnose where it all went so wrong in the second half on Sunday’s All-Ireland Hurling final.

Having found themselves in a “great position” up six at half-time, the Rebel chief felt they were outworked by Tipperary who harvested that momentum to outscore Cork 3-14 to 0-2 after the break.

“Our momentum and our energy was terrible in the second half,” he began.

“They had all the momentum, they had all the energy, they were the crowd that were working the hardest. That's the disappointing thing from our point of view.”

He added: “It's the second All-Ireland in a row that we've lost. Just really, really disappointed with that second half. We didn't represent ourselves the way we should have represented ourselves.

“We're just disappointed with our reaction as well. To only score two points in the second half isn't good enough for us.”

Ryan added that Cork’s interplay let them down, with players not making the right decisions to pass to teammates.

“They had the momentum, and we didn't use the ball well enough. We probably played a bit more as individuals.

“That's something we spoke about, trying to make sure that when things go against you, that you keep playing as a team, keep sticking to the process, and keep sticking to what we want to do.

“Those half balls inside and taking that extra pass, we didn't do it. As someone said there, I think we had three balls off the post where we could have carried those balls in and made those scores.

“At the end of the day, it's hard to find bits and pieces when Tipperary just blew us away in the second half.”

While Cork fell agonisingly short in extra-time against Clare last year, Ryan couldn’t salvage the same positives from their 2025 performance.

“Last year, we came away with a good bit of pride in the way we performed and the epic game it was.

“In fairness, that second half petered out, and that was disappointing from our point of view.

“Séamus (Harnedy) came in and gave us a bit of a bounce. But just after Séamus came in, we were down a man straight away.

“Those two goals came fierce quick, momentum just went from us, and the game went from us.

“We probably went a bit inward into ourselves instead of trying to step forward into the game. But from our point of view, credit to Tipp. That's all we can say.”

When asked about John McGrath’s nudge on Eoin Downey in the build-up to the penalty and red card, Ryan refused to blame Liam Gordon.

“It's hard to see from where I am,” he replied.

“I'm not going to complain about the referee now after the beating we got today.”

He also declined to curse Cork’s bad fortune of hitting the crossbar once and the post three times in the second half.

“Maybe it's wrong to say luck because it was a lot of good play by Tipperary that won that game. Luck had absolutely nothing to do with it.

“The harder you work, the more breaks that come for you and the more balls that fall into your hands.

“In fairness, they worked really, really hard, used the ball really, really well, and put us under pressure on our own puck-out, especially in the second half. And put us under big pressure on their puck-out in the second half as well.

“Credit to Tipperary. It's disappointing for our fellas.”