Cork’s loss at the hands of Tipperary on Sunday afternoon surprised many hurling viewers around the country, but the manner in which Tipperary crushed the Rebels is something that almost came out of the blue. While Tipperary possess a group of fantastic scoring forwards (and midfielders, on Sunday’s evidence), Cork’s season up until that point had been hugely positive.

Cork selector Seanie McGrath was on Off the Ball tonight where he revealed his shock at his sides’ collapse.

“Everything had gone really, really well coming into the game, our preparations were bang on and, you know, we didn’t have any last-minute hitches in the hotel or anything so yeah, everything was fine

“I’d suppose just on the day, you know, we were beaten by a better side definitely albeit we didn’t really perform anywhere near our maximum or anywhere near what we had done earlier in the Munster campaign and all in all, it was just a really, really poor day at the office and we were terribly disappointed.”

Eamon O’Shea’s side ran out 10-point winners on an afternoon where Seamus Callanan was the main protagonist for the Premier hurlers. But when did McGrath realise things were going to go pear-shaped for his side?

“It certainly wasn’t before the game and it certainly wasn’t in the warm-up. You know, it was very obvious all week and leading up to the game that the guys were really, really up for it and the training was desperately sharp on Tuesday and Thursday. When we finished up on Thursday night we were really happy and felt that they were terribly focused. Having said that, we knew it was going to be a really, really hard game and we didn’t go into the game in any way underestimating Tipperary. Quite the opposite.”

You can listen to the full interview from tonight’s show using the player below.