![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/5129031_6_articleinline_3491424.jpg\" "\\"The")
The two teams stand for the anthem prior to Sunday’s game. Picture:\u00a0Paul Phelan\/Sportsfile<\/p>\nOutside \u2018noise\u2019 is not something that is allowed to permeate the Cork dressing-room, maintains defender Se\u00e1n O\u2019Donoghue.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, the Rebels reached a third straight All-Ireland SHC semi-final as they had 26 points to spare on Offaly, backing up a status as strong favourites beforehand.<\/p>\n
Cork led throughout at FBD Semple Stadium and O\u2019Donoghue believes that the fact there were four changes from the team that lost to Limerick in the Munster final underlined how nobody can take anything for granted, especially with quality to come off the bench.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, there was a couple of changes made on Sunday,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, the fellas coming off the bench who had been starting, they had points to prove when they came on and they played well. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe had other lads who hadn\u2019t been starting but had been coming on consistently and they had points to prove as well and show what they’re capable of. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou have that competition, but also I suppose, Offaly came out of Leinster in third place, so they’re obviously good. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis unbackable favourite thing is just noise, it\u2019s up to you whether you want to listen or not, but we don’t listen to any of that kind of stuff anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cork scored five first-half goals to end the game as a contest but in the second half Offaly scored two goals as Ben O\u2019Connor\u2019s side\u2019s scoring rate dropped.<\/p>\n
The two teams stand for the anthem prior to Sunday’s game. Picture:\u00a0Paul Phelan\/Sportsfile<\/p>\n
\u201cYour intention is to obviously just drive it on,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want to do the same things in the second half there as you did in the first half, it just didn’t work out that way. It’s hard to pinpoint, I suppose, but it\u2019s something that we’re going to have to work on for the next two weeks and just make sure that we’re firing in both halves against Galway.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the first half, O\u2019Donoghue assisted a goal for Brian Hayes and then in the second period he managed to score his first-ever championship point for Cork.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just think we had that luxury I suppose, when they were kind of sitting a fella back there the odd time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou had the luxury of going forward and forcing them to try to track back, and if they didn’t track back, then you were free. There was just an instructin there, just to take a chance and go if you saw it when the chance presented itself. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf I picked the ball first time, I was probably going to go for a goal, that was on my mind but I obviously mis-picked it and then I had a chance to just throw it over, so yeah, first score in the championship.\u201d<\/p>\n
He might not get the chance to get on the scoresheet against Galway, but of course the primary aim is to help Cork to what would be a seventh straight final.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, we know we\u2019re capable of doing it and we’ve had moments, parts of games and stuff that we haven’t done it, but that doesn’t define us either,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we’re firing, we’re hard to beat and when we’re not firing, we’re easy to beat. It’s a case of just making sure that we’re firing 99 percent of the time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Outside \u2018noise\u2019 is not something that is allowed to permeate the Cork dressing-room, maintains defender Se\u00e1n O\u2019Donoghue. On…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1964,61,60,112],"class_list":["post-515949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-cork-gaa","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}