Noel O'Leary says there is a strong desire in the Cork camp to reward their senior players with All-Ireland medals before they retire.

The half back said: "The likes of Anthony (Lynch) there and Graham (Canty) and Quirky (Alan Quirke) and these guys, they are well in their thirties and have given great service to Cork. For them alone we would be very conscious (of what winning an All-Ireland would mean).

"It would be an unbelievable thing. Winning an All-Ireland is every man's dream and that is why we play. That was our goal at the start of the year to make the All-Ireland final and atone for last year.

"But there's no point in getting carried away, we have a lot of work ahead of us. That game is over. There was a lot we would be unhappy with today. But the one thing we would be happy with was that we stuck in there and had the battling qualities to pull it out of the fire.

"People will be on about Kerry and Tyrone being out of the competition but, look, Kildare and Down are no bad teams. You are not going to get to an All-Ireland final as a bad team. We are going to go into it the same way whether it was Kerry in an All-Ireland final or Tyrone or Kildare or Down or whoever. We have to approach it the same way." Tweet

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