Cork boss Kieran Kingston says he’s side need to up their game if they are to overcome Kilkenny in the All-Ireland SHC semi-final next weekend.

The Rebels scored a 2-26 to 0-24 victory over Dublin yesterday evening in Thurles, where goals from Tim O’Mahony and Shane Kingston, along with 0-12 from Patrick Horgan, helped to see them over the line.

Speaking to Sky Sports GAA afterwards, Kingston cut a relieved figure.

"We were asleep in the first five minutes," he said. "We could have conceded two goals early on. We got a bit of luck, we rode our luck I think. We played well for the rest of the quarter. We got a couple of scores, finished the first half in a good place.

"But I thought we were really poor in the third quarter, we lost it by a point. And we ended up drawing the second-half. We know that heading in to meet Kilkenny, our second-half performance and in particular our third-quarter performance would not be good enough.

"But we must give great credit to Dublin. We were playing against a team who had beaten Galway, who had a lot of distractions and a lot of disruption heading into the Leinster final and still gave a great account of themselves.

“So, within the camp, we knew tonight was going to be a really big challenge. A lot of people said 'oh it's a handy draw'. We knew this was going to be a massive game. Dublin threw everything at us, and in fairness to them, they stayed with us and stayed at us right up to the very end.

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