Hayes keeps focussed
August 25, 2008
Cork goal hero John Hayes kept a cool head on Sunday to rescue the Rebels from defeat with a 72nd minute penalty against Kerry at Croke Park.
The corner-forward admitted afterwards that while he stood over the spot-kick in injury time that would decide whether Cork would remain in the All-Ireland Championship, he done his best to focus on picking his spot and shake off the nervous that surrounded the kick.
"I tried not to think too much about it. There was a bit of a delay allowed me to get focussed, and I knew where I wanted to place the kick, so from that point of view it wasn't too difficult.
"Three of us usually practice penalty kicks in training, and I suppose the job became mine after we had lost Donnacha (O'Connor) and Daniel (Goulding).
"I had scored two goals from the penalty spot into that goal before so it would be fair to say I was the obvious choice to take this particular one.
"I don't have technique; just decide where I want to place it, keep the head down, and kick it as hard as I can. Thankfully it worked again today."
Hayes believes that next weekend's approach will have to differ from Sunday's as he admitted that Cork were playing with the wrong tactics that allowed a devastating Kerry side the freedom to play themselves into an eight-point advantage with seven minutes to go.
"I feel we didn't get our tactics right on the day. We sat off Kerry, gave them far too much room, and lacked the intensity of the second-half of the Munster final.
"The ball into the forwards wasn't great, but we weren't exactly burning it up inside either, and that was very frustrating."
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