John Meyler admitted that Bill Cooper's pre-match injury was a major setback to Cork against Tipperary.

The midfielder was injured in the warm-up, meaning Luke Meade had to switch to midfield with Robbie O’Flynn entering the attack at the last minute.

“It just meant reorganising, Bill is a fantastic player, a leader of the team really - he’s one of the senior members of the team so it was a massive loss to us,” the Cork manager said after his side's 1-24 to 2-28 defeat at Páirc Uí Chaoimh.

“But we just had to reorganise, and put Luke (Meade) back into midfield. He played quite well I thought, but we lost that at half-forward and we lost Bill at midfield.

“But that’s not an excuse, really, you have to be able to lose one or two players through injury or whatever, and that was it.”

Meyler conceded that the visitors were the better team as Cork now switch their thoughts to taking on All-Ireland champions Limerick in the Gaelic Grounds next weekend.

“I think Tipperary were more fluent, sharper, more mobile, (had) better support play than us today,” he added.

“They looked extremely hungry, they got a very good start with the goal, they got a good advantage on us early on, in the first half, but we brought it back to a point at half-time.

“I thought we’d get in at half-time and reorganise, get back to the basics again, but again, they came out for the second half and drove on again. That goal they got up in the top end really kind of finished us off there.”

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