Conor Counihan has identified Bernard Brogan as the biggest single threat to Cork's ambitions of reaching the All-Ireland football final.

The St. Oliver Plunkett's/Eoghan Ruadh clubman has been in unstoppable form this summer and Counihan admits he will take a lot of watching in Sunday week's All-Ireland semi-final.

"He's the best forward in the country at the minute," the Cork manager said without any hesitation.

"You have to hand it to him. But look, we can't afford to get carried away with Bernard Brogan or anyone else. We have to get ourselves right."

Counihan has also been impressed by his Dublin counterpart Pat Gilroy, who have overseen a major overhaul in the capital this year.

"The transition has been major in terms of personnel and equally in terms of their style of play," he noted.

"It takes an awful lot of courage and conviction to do that. Fair play to them. There was an awful lot of times when people were doubting the management but they've proved everyone wrong because at the end of the day, it's a results business."

Counihan accepts that the Rebels have struggled to reach the heights of last year in their championship campaign to date.

"Rightly or wrongly, maybe some of the teams we played on the way through, some people under-rated them," he said.

"Trying to get people motivated for that can be difficult, whereas now we're in an All-Ireland semi-final against one of the top teams. The motivation to get to an All-Ireland final is as big as it gets. I think we haven't been playing as attractive a brand of football as some people would like. There have been periods in all the games when we have played well. Whether it was against Wexford or similarly against Limerick ... the issue is that we didn't sustain it over a period of time.

"The reality is that we haven't had the full squad for any match at all this season. Teams have watched us and the style of play we were operating, they're setting themselves up to deal with us that way." Tweet

Most Read Stories