All Ireland Senior Hurling Championship 2026 (Munster & Leinster Championships, Liam McCarthy Cup)

Yeah. When Hannon and O'Donovan were left off the team for championship games, I didn't see either coming back.

O'Donovan is a serious survivor, I know his club form has been very good too.

He was out for a year with an injury and last year it looked like he wasn't gonna make it back ti top form but he absolutely has. Undroppable now.

Ya it's everyone else's fault they can't score in second halves, their players are not savvy enough to talk to the ref, their fans and their manager are making fools of themselves.

How dare people go on about all these things that just happened in the 2026 championship on the 2026 championship thread.

Heres more of it. Unfair and over the top criticism about every aspect of Cork and Cork hurling.

They lose one game by a point to Limerick this year in the championship and this is the crap you come out with

Nobody embarrassed themselves first off. It was a tight game won by a single point.

Nobody got attacked, nobody got abused. There was no aggro.

It's just a ridiculous number of comments looking for absolutely anything to over criticise.

There are more posts giving out about Cork people giving out than actual posts from Cork people giving out.

The Limerick thread was full of moaning about Owens the week of the match as if he was the only reason Limerick lost the round robin match or could possibly lose on Sunday, now it's all moaning about Cork people moaning about Owens saying they should look at themselves. It's just the world we live in unfortunately!

The Limerick manager the week of the match in the media was blatantly plámásing referees banging on about all we want is for them to have a good day, then on the day of the match itself he's bouncing up and down remonstrating with the fourth official over every decision. Yet John Kiely is a gentleman and BOC is the second coming of Davy Fitz! Both men are just defending their own patch which Ben acknowledged in his interview.

Fair play to Limerick on the win. They shaded it on a dirty day for hurling. Hopefully if both teams meet again the weather will be better and we'll get a referee who allows a bit more play develop.

There was less than one second between O'Mahony catching the ball while facing the Cork goal and colliding with Hegarty. The freeze frames are telling a false story here, as they often do.

Hegarty runs in and stops just as the collision happens but he drops his body position and is blocking O'Mahonys path. The front of his shoulder has caught him.

It wasn't that disimilar to Willie Connors on Rodgers to be honest. Thought the calls for a red card that time were over the top personally, now people don't even want a free for that kind of foul. The refs definitely cannot win.

Absolute joke the amount of whingeing about refs both here and in the media.

You CANNOT on recognise the pivotal importance referees play in facilitating games on the one and hand; and whinge relentlessly because a particular ref isnt 'up to it' in your totally fuppin amateur opinion on the other.

Lets not have that ref; and not have the match at all.

In saying all that, you can't convince me that yesterday's game was dirty or nasty. It had something like 30 frees but I've seen filthy games with fewer. But I'd say the ball was in play for 40 minutes and it turned into a free-taking contest.

We also had yesterday loads of fellas milking frees, with a free for a shoulder, a free for falling to the ground, a free for dropping a hurley, frees for falling into the defender etc.

But come back to my point, what has Owens seen from Hegarty that merited a free at the end there? Surely he thinks he's seen a shoulder to the chest, right?

They're not going to do fewer free-arm tackles though, or flicking the elbow. They're not going to stop with the full-on dragging of jerseys off the ball. Grabbing each other's hurleys. There's just persistent fouling all over the place. And there's so much of it that no ref can get all of it. Maybe they could start with stamping out one thing at a time and work through the long list. But do people even want that?

Kilkenny were winning all irelands at minor and u21 in the 2000s for fun so had a conveyor belt of players. Limerick don't have that talent coming through so have to make so with what they have

That's it. But from 2008 underage started to dry up with regards national titles bar 2014 minor and u21 2022. That's some of Kilkenny's problem today.

Yerah it was a yellow alright. Hegarty has a habit of it and was something that Owens obviously spotted on analysis of the round robin game.

A question for Cork fans. How does Alan Connolly get his game? He's useless.

A bit of respect doesn't cost anything Billy. He's frustratingly inconsistent and goes out of games for too long but he's far from useless. Didn't miss a free in brutal conditions yesterday which deserves some credit on a day when the opposition free taker really struggled. Could have been the difference if Cork held on. Had a bad day from open play granted on a difficult day for forwards.

Back up free taker Fitzgibbon was out and Dalton was out injured as well but also seemingly out of favour.