Cork numbers don't add up

How bad then was that Cork 'performance' last Sunday? Their 12-point drubbing was surely the worst of all time in a provincial final? You pose the question and think such a result/performance could not have happened previously but all you have to do is trawl the record books to confirm indeed it has. Many times. And recently enough too.

Here's a quick sample: 1962: Kerry 4 - 8; Cork 0 - 4 (16 pts). 1971: Cork 0 - 25; Kerry0 - 14 (+ 11 pts). 1990: Cork 2 - 23; Kerry 1 - 11 (+ 15 )

We quickly forget and move on. In an amateur sport one is slow to criticise unfairly and certainly the keyboard warriors from the online discussion boards are so far the wrong side of the offside line even a linesman on World Cup duty would spot them.

But after months of preparation a county can expect its representatives to muster a reasonable effort in the contest for glory and alas, Cork failed to measure up.

The numbers don't lie: Nothing from play between 1:59 and 37:51, when Fintan Goold (right) scored with a fisted point which amounts to approximately 36 minutes without a score from play

Daniel Goulding taps over a free at 6:26 and from then to 35:43 - NO score at all. That's almost an hour. Between 7:20 and 34:01 Kerry scored 11 points without a Cork reply in those 27 minutes.

No doubt the stats men will crunch the numbers but for the manager it comes back to some basic requirements from his team: honesty of effort and an energy for the contest. Both fundamentals were absent last Sunday.