Seánie McGrath: Semple Stadium would have been a small town library without Cork

With four counties involved, you’d have expected a great deal of colour painted through the stands and terraces. Instead, three quarters of the place was draped in red.

That following will go up the road to Croker in a fortnight in phenomenal numbers. And we’ll duly deal with that next fortnight further down. Let’s just stay in Thurles for the time being.

The game transpired largely as I thought it might. There was a constant inevitability that Cork were not going to falter here.

To give Dublin their dues, their stick-passing was sharp, especially from the puckout where Seán Brennan would pinpoint a midfielder or half-forward that had peeled out toward the sideline. But reducing all that to a pile of rubble was their absolutely dreadful execution. They lacked the marksmen to get them over the line, or even just to put the sliotar between the posts.

Cork, while below par, had the hurlers capable of finding the target with regular frequency. Sounds simple. Dublin succeeded in making it look difficult.

No more than the Offaly game, there are learnings for Cork to take from Thurles. Once again, they coughed up too much soft possession. They left Dublin players free for too long. Limerick will play the same triangles in the middle third. The difference with the champions is they have an embarrassing abundance of marksmen to punish Cork. It’s a case of being more alert and touch-tight, particularly off the opposition puckout.

The Cork performance, overall, was flat. No bite. The bout of illness running through the camp over the past fortnight is likely to have been responsible for a chunk of that. And while colour will return to collective cheeks over the next fortnight, the sickness that took Rob Downey out of the equation on Saturday has presented management with tough decisions that require making between now and 4pm Sunday week.

Rob has to be back in the team the next day. This isn’t one Glen Rovers man going out to bat for another. Under the headings of form and leadership, he had been a revelation up until missing the Dublin win. Centre-back really suited him.

The half-back trio is the one line above all others that Cork really have to get right simply because such enterprise comes from the Limerick half-forward line. Gearóid Hegarty is in the form of his life. Tom Morrissey appears to be rediscovering his mojo. If Cian Lynch is at midfield, David Reidy and Cathal O’Neill can both play the No.11 role so proficiently and sit off the opposition centre-back.

Downey in the half-back line gives us teak-toughness, unbelievable hurling ability, and aerially too, he is so able. If management put Rob and Ciarán Joyce in the half-back line, some other defender will have to miss out. If they keep Ciarán at midfield, what is his job, is he capable of doing that job, and if not, well then he stays in the half-back line.

Deciding who goes where and why in the jerseys numbered five through nine is a good problem for Pat Ryan and his management to have to solve. So much of what Limerick do well emanates from their midfield pairing - which could feature the returning Darragh O’Donovan - and the aforementioned half-forward line that Cork have to get their five picks in this section absolutely spot on. Getting this right will go a distance to getting Cork past the champions.

The Offaly and Dublin games were always going to be difficult because players were coming down off the euphoria of pitch invasions and having saved their season in such exhilarating fashion. No matter what level of psychology the panel engage in, they were never going to come near those same heights over the past two weekends.

The majority of this panel have experienced an awful lot of pain, close calls, and a good shot of them have All-Ireland final experience. The team is sufficiently stocked and built up to the degree that they’ll know what needs to be done in the next two weeks to rediscover their Munster round-robin fire.

They and Pat will get that part right, I am certain. The elder guys in the set-up, Patrick Horgan and Seamie Harnedy, their leadership will stand up over the next fortnight. They'll start lifting fellas up because there is an unbelievable opportunity there and they also know that ferocious appetite they displayed to turn around their season last month needs to return to their play.

They know what is required to take Limerick. They know they must eradicate the small bit of sloppiness that has crept in. Against Dublin, I could see Hoggie, Connolly, and Brian Hayes making runs, but fellas outside were not delivering in possession quick enough.

Peppering the full-forward line as often as possible, with the half-forward cavalry charging in to feast on the breaks, as they did against Tipp and Limerick, is when this Cork team are at their best. That sharpness needs to be fired up again over the next fortnight.

I’m going to finish with a word on Patrick Collins because there is nobody else talking about him anymore - which is a huge positive. Patrick endured a difficult start to the championship. So much commentary focused on his distribution. He has been so solid of late, not to mind the save he made from Diarmuid Ó Dúlaing late on against Dublin. More of the same against Limerick, please.