Cork boss Ronan McCarthy refused to point to progress after seeing his side exit the Championship on Saturday evening.
After pushing Kerry and Tyrone all the way with a commendable performance against Dublin in between, Cork have been far more competitive than they were in the 2018 Championship though McCarthy wasn’t leaning on that as a source of consolation.
He said: “I am not, really, in the sense that we can come away from this patting ourselves on the back saying we were competitive against the top teams.
“We went to beat Kerry, we didn’t beat them. We have come away from another game which was certainly within our grasp and we haven’t closed it out.
“Others might look at it and say we have made progress, but we are bitterly disappointed with the fact that we haven’t made progress.”
Reflecting on what his players will have learned in the last few weeks, McCarthy continued: “The lesson is that when you are on top, you need to drive it home. And when the opposition are on top, you go back to basics and doing basics well. We didn’t do that, at times.
“I don’t want to be overly critical of the players. There is a marvellous group of players there. They want to be successful with Cork. Certainly, they are putting everything they can into doing that.
“It is hard for us to take. It is going to hurt, and hurt massively for a while, but that is the nature of it. There will be regrets.”
Cork still have a game to fulfil against Roscommon on Sunday week and, though it’s a dead rubber, McCarthy insisted: “We are at a point where we can’t turn our nose up at any game.
“We’ll prepare for this properly, the same way we have for other games. I’ve spoken to the players already about our training plan for the coming weeks.
“We’ll be coming into that game looking to win it and keep the bit of momentum going.
“The one positive is we’ll have six Championship games played this year, which is two seasons in one. We’ve had a lot of learning, but it is hard learning.”
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