Michael Moynihan: In the knife-edge referendum with Galway, Kingston and Cork spoil their own ballots

Some of the Cork players who came up the motorway on the team bus will hardly make that journey again. At the final whistle in Thurles a few of them lingered a couple of extra minutes on the field

Left counting the cost: Cork’s Damien Cahalane walks off the field at Semple Stadium dejected at defeat to Galway. Pic: INPHO/James Crombie

Every game is a referendum in and of itself, of course. Saturday’s was no different. The ballot paper can be exhausting, if not exhaustive, with qualitative propositions stretching into the distance.

Munster v Leinster: which is better? Player or manager: who’s more influential? Thurles or Croke Park: which is the superior venue?

Put your X in the box for team identity here, then, with both teams looking to establish a clear notion of themselves after a puzzling provincial championship.

Galway came in looking to redeem themselves after a disappointing Leinster final; Cork entered the field trying to re-establish themselves as All-Ireland contenders.

Who topped the poll?

Galway. Just about. After the Wagnerian drama of the Munster final this was comic opera at times, particularly in the first half. Players fluffed frees and lost the flight of the ball, hooked shots wide and spilled possession.

Cork in particular will have nightmares about their first half. They left 2-4 behind them in the first ten minutes alone as their forwards sailed through the Galway defence, streaming goalwards like cossacks.

In comparison, Galway were a model of economy. The westerners created one real goal chance in the opening half but scored two - Jack Grealish’s speculative first-minute effort looped into the top corner, and Conor Whelan’s terrific solo goal was quarried out of a losing cause in the left corner on 26 minutes.

On 26 minutes it was 2-2 to 0-5: a Tailteann Cup scoreline, but Galway surged with three points on the bounce, an outrageous Whelan effort the pick of the bunch. In a first-half that simmered without seasoning that counted as a rich vein of form.

There’s an argument that Galway probably lost the first-half battle on almost every metric - Cork slashed through their rearguard and muzzled their attack for long stretches - except one. When the chances came they took them. And even when they didn’t, they did: witness Grealish’s goal.

Late in the half their run of three consecutive points was cohesion beyond a Cork side whose shooting had almost totally disintegrated. At the break the men in red had seven points on the board to Galway’s 2-6; we better retract that earlier calumny about the Tailteann Cup.

To be fair the quality overall from both candidates picked up in the second half. Shane Kingston slashed through for a Cork goal early on but Galway maintained a three- or four-point cushion thanks to Whelan’s combativeness, the forward giving a master class in work rate and application. And accuracy, come to that.

We need more of those: Cork's Darragh Fitzgibbon is congratulated by manager Kieran Kingston after scoring a point. Pic: INPHO/Tom Maher

In relative terms they scored with more ease than Cork, even if a sudden flash of Rebel scores brought the southerners within one; Galway stretched it to three again with the final quarter dawning and Joseph Cooney howitzered a point from his own half to make it four.

From then on they only needed to match Cork point for point, and they did, winning by one in the finish. Tight but deserved. Decisive if not emphatic.

Attention will be paid, understandably, to Cork’s finishing, but credit to Galway for their puck-out strategy, particularly in the second half. Their ability to get points from their own restarts was a major plus; Cork’s inability to shut them down was an issue that had echoes of their defeat against Clare.

Galway boss Henry Shefflin felt his players owed themselves a performance like Saturday’s after the Leinster final: “I think they did. I was obviously disappointed with the Leinster final but I think they were bitterly disappointed because they felt they didn’t leave it out there and that’s all you can ask for.

“So look, we’re thrilled with today, we’re very mindful of what’s coming next but you have to enjoy these moments. This is what we all do it for, a tight, tense battle like that and coming out the right side of it, it is a good feeling.

“Unfortunately down in the Cork dressing room that is very different. It’s small margins. I was delighted HawkEye was here today because if it wasn’t we were obviously in bother.” Cork manager Kieran Kingston pinpointed his side’s difficulties.

“We didn’t help ourselves in the first half, we had 24 shots and seven scores, so the efficiency was really poor. In that there were missed goal scoring opportunities which we’ve been taking easily enough in the last few games, but today for some reason we weren’t.

“Credit to the lads, they created the chances but we we weren’t converting them. I thought the lads showed real character in the second half, they never threw the towel in.

“I’m as proud of them for reacting that way to the first half because they could have thrown the towel in after conceding soft scores and missing scores, but they didn’t. And I’m really proud they didn’t do that and they at least deserved a draw out of the game.” 

 Galway will take positives from the game, but issues remain. They conceded far too many frees, for instance: if Cork had converted a reasonable percentage of those the game would have taken on a different dimension, and from this point onwards conversion rates among the contenders spike steeply upwards.

Aaron Gillane and TJ Reid, for instance, don’t turn their noses up at opportunities to score from frees.

For Cork the season ends as it began, in disappointment, a sensation made all the sharper because of the performance.

Some of the Cork players who came up the motorway on the team bus will hardly make that journey again. Auditions begin soon enough in the local championship, but at the final whistle in Thurles a few of them lingered a couple of extra minutes on the field. Perhaps it was to take in the scene one last time: Semple Stadium on big-match day. To paraphrase the late Roger Angell, a wan Odysseus or two, cast ashore on another bare beach.

Not for long, though. Wexford and then Clare burst from the tunnel for the second game soon enough to decide the second election of the day.

In sport as much as politics sentiment soon comes up against iron imperatives.