Ireland women’s international at Páirc Uí Chaoimh will not impact on Cork’s All-Ireland final preparations

Cork manager Pat Ryan says the Ireland women’s Euro 2025 qualifier at Páirc Uí Chaoimh next Tuesday will have no impact on his side’s preparations for their All-Ireland SHC final against Clare.

Páirc Uí Chaoimh will host the international clash between Ireland and France next week, but Cork have already made alternative arrangements to train nearby at Páirc Uí Rinn.

“It’s not going to impede our training,” Ryan said at Monday night’s pre-All-Ireland final media briefing. “[It will be] Páirc Uí Rinn next Tuesday. We kind of rotate between Páirc Uí Rinn and sometimes we go to Fota, so there’ll be no issue there.”

Ryan is leaving no stone unturned in his efforts to try bring Liam MacCarthy back to Leeside for the first time since 2005 – and he is currently on leave from his job in Pfizer in Ringaskiddy to focus on hurling.

“I’m on two weeks’ parental leave at the moment, so it’s not too bad,” he said. “So no, look, to be honest with you, I’m lucky in my job, I have good bosses and stuff like that so I took two weeks’ parental leave. That prep that you needed to do before Limerick needed to be done.

“Obviously I was confident that we would win and I knew that this week would be a really, really helter-skelter week, and I had that planned into it.”

The Cork players were in Páirc Uí Chaoimh on Monday evening for a gym session, and will be back out on the pitch on Wednesday night as they step up preparations for the showdown against Clare. No injury concerns have emerged from the win over Limerick, though the players did have a long bus trip home on Sunday night as traffic was heavy leaving the capital. Still, the victory sustained the players on the journey back south.

“Fellas were delighted, it was a huge task going up to Croke Park and beating Limerick. There is no point telling you how good a team they are. Look, there was great satisfaction in that win,” said Ryan. “We had a few drinks down on the bus and fellas were ready to go today for a gym session there now. Fellas are in great form, and we’ll be back in training on Wednesday.

“We looked back at the Limerick game (on Monday) morning. Just did our bit of analysis and we tidied that off there just before the gym session. We’ll meet (on Tuesday) morning again and go through the whole Clare game and deliver on Wednesday what we want to do against Clare.”

Cork will travel to Dublin on the day before the All-Ireland final in a fortnight.

“We stayed overnight in the Burlington on the Saturday night for the semi-final so the plan is to do the same for the final,” said Ryan. “We found it way more relaxing than going up on the train in the morning. So we’ll travel up on the Saturday and there is the usual function that normally happens for Cork teams after All-Irelands so we’ll be staying the Sunday night as well.”

Ryan also praised the display of referee Thomas Walsh for adding to Sunday’s epic semi-final between Limerick and Cork – and stressed officiating the hand pass is difficult for the men in the middle.

“It’s hard, it’s very hard. At the time I thought Alan’s was a throw personally but then when you see it back and it wasn’t a throw. I thought Thomas Walsh did a fantastic job with the game as a whole. You couldn’t argue with it. He was in charge of a great spectacle of hurling.”