"We became a bit disjointed, disorganised and committed all sorts of silly mistakes"

After securing the win with a late seven point flourish and in the process steering clear of relegation trouble with a game to spare and moving themselves even closer to a guaranteed spot in the summer's Sam Maguire cup race, the Cork contingent were only too happy to talk to the media.

First up a buoyant Ian Maguire spoke to RTE, Cork local radio and then the national papers, then manager John Cleary settled into the media room under the Pairc Tailteann stand for a length chat with the written press.

The consequence of the talkative Cork representatives was that it was an hour after the final whistle that Meath manager Colm O'Rourke had his turn to explain his side's performance that had been impressive for almost 60 minutes before their dramatic fade out.

"Well if the clock stopped at 60 minutes I would have said that was quite a good performance after shipping an early goal and fighting back," lamented the Meath boss.

"We had a lot of wides in the first half but I thought we were comfortable going into the last quarter of the game. At that stage it's normally a good quarter for us and we have finished strongly in other games. Instead of that we became a bit disjointed, disorganised and committed all sorts of silly mistakes.

"We had trouble getting our kick outs away when Cork pushed up on us and we were a bit tentative instead of going for the kill when we were three up.

"Playing the ball around and not attacking at the sort of pace that we had been doing, so it came back to bite us a bit. Cork really upped their game at that stage too so we've no complaints, beaten by a better team, we'll suck it up, get on with it.

"This is a young team, making plenty of mistakes and just as well it's not going to have any great significance in as far as relegation is concerned."

O'Rourke was quick to refute the suggestions that maybe Cork just wanted it more than Meath.

That the Rebels need for a win was greater, whereas Meath had nothing at stake.

The manager was adamant that they had wanted to win and that they had prepared as well for Saturday's game as they had for another game in the league.

He did suggest that maybe some of his players are fatigued, mentally as well as physically, and hinted that some might get a rest when they travel to Donegal for next Saturday's final game of the league.

"No I wouldn't buy into that either (that Cork needed the win more than Meath). We had talked during the week that we needed to be in a position that if Kildare did us a favour against Donegal then we would tidy up our side of things and be going to Donegal next week with something to play for," he said.

"We also had set out an ambition this year not to get beaten at home in the league so I wouldn't put that as an excuse at all. Despite the fact that we were safe in the division, we were looking for a win here, we prepared as well as we have for any other game and there are no excuses.

"I always say if a fella plays county football at this level the most important motivating factor should be pride in your own performance. I wouldn't like to think that anybody would allow something like that (believing there was nothing to play for) to get in the way, if you're not driven at county level then you have no place there.

"I thought we should have been a few points up at half-time, but then again Cork were dangerous on the break and opened us up quite a few times in the first half.

"Then the injury to Darragh Campion didn't help and the injury to Jack O'Connor and the injury to Rory Kinsella, all of these things add up. You like to make substitution which are not forced and instead of that we had to try a reorganisation our forces, but again young players making lots of mistakes.

"A lot of them in the end looked tired. I think the Sigerson Cup campaign for quite a few of them and now the league seems to have taken a toll, they could do with freshening up a bit.

"We do intend having a (warm weather) training camp in May ourselves, we're working on that, but the problem with a lot of the fellas at this stage is maybe a bit of mental tiredness more than physical.

"They could do with a week off maybe we should be telling them to go off on holiday themselves but a lot of them are students so they're working towards exams in May as well so there's plenty of pressure on a lot of these fellas."

It was pointed out to O'Rourke that Mathew Costello's goal was a throwback to the old days of a more direct style of football and the manager, again, reiterated that the long ball into the full-forward still has a place in the game.

He also revealed that he has trimmed back his panel with players going back to their clubs and a couple of new additions from the development squad.

O'Rourke also provided an update on some of the ongoing injury concerns.

"Well it just shows that works (the long, direct ball into the full-forward). Kerry do it with a long ball into David Clifford, Dublin do it with a long ball into Con O'Callaghan, it still works very very well and when you have a player of Matt Costello's calibre, he's good in the air and he's strong, why not take advantage of it?

"We had a very big panel so there's 10 have gone back to the clubs for the club leagues and it's an open door policy, lads playing well with their clubs will come in whether they've been on the panel or not.

"Two have come up from the development squad, Brendan McKeon and Sean Rafferty, so we've changed it up a little bit, we had a very big panel so we've just brought down to 35.

"There's a lot of the lads now nearly ready to play, the likes of the two Ryans (Ronan and Ross), Jason Scully and Jordan Morris they're all nearly ready to go. Conor Gray is going to take a little bit longer and of course we'll have Ronan Jones back, so I'm hoping that by championship time we might have maybe four or five extra bodies.

"It is a concern (the lack of game time for the injured players), but we do have fairly competitive in-house games and we bring in extra lads to make up 15 against 15.

"Every one of those games is competitive because lads know it's a chance to either get on the team or make a jump up to the 26.

"There's 10 of them in their first league campaign so there's a lot of inexperience with them as well so we have to coax them along gently.

"We have to balance that (the tough game against Donegal) with trying to maybe give a rest to a few people who have played Sigerson and had a really really tough campaign.

"They have been training since before Christmas so a few of them could do with a bit of a break but there's not much break with the Longford game coming up two weeks after Donegal.

"We will try to maybe give some fellas a little chance that haven't got a game and at the same time we have to have one eye on Longford or maybe both eyes on Longford," concluded the manager.