Cork were hoping to follow up a promising 2020 with a positive result in the opening game of this year's league campaign, but yesterday's loss to Kildare hinted that there was still plenty of work to do.
While it was a hard fought contest, Jack O'Shea's side would ultimately run our fairly comfortable four-point winners in the end.
The underwhelming start to the league leaded to some suggesting that manager Ronan McCarthy's 12-week ban may have had an impact. He received the sanction after his team broke covid guidelines by having a team bonding session.
However, speaking after the game McCarthy believed this had little impact on the performance. However, he did suggest that the GAA's disciplinary system did need to be discussed at some stage.
I am not going to talk about that now (the ban). I'll have something to say about that at a later stage. My focus is on the game today.
I think, to be fair, there is a very quick turnaround to the next game and I think people have to realise this was back in January, we have moved on from this months ago.
And to some extent, it had no effect on the team at all. It was a personal suspension and is certainly not something I am going to be talking about today.
Maybe at a later stage when we have some time on our hands we can have a more in-depth discussion on the mechanisms of the GAA disciplinary system.
Dublin's Dessie Farrell, Down's Paddy Tally, and Monaghan's Séamus McEnaney also received bans for similar offences.
Cork were promoted from Division 3 last season and have been placed in a group with Kildare, Clare, Laois for this year's campaign. A positive result will be the needed in the next game to ease possible relegation concerns.
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