Anthony Daly: Can anyone stop Cork's champagne hurling after league final win?
No matter where I turned in Montrose in RTÉ yesterday, I was surrounded by Rebels. Jacqui Hurley was behind me, Donal Óg Cusack alongside me. When the match was tied at 0-8 each after 20 minutes, I piped up and said to them that the storyline wasn’t exactly following the script that they, and everyone else in Cork, expected. And then, in what felt like an instant, the narrative was suddenly shifting back in its anticipated direction.
After Cork tacked on three unanswered points, I said to Jacqui and Donal Ă“g that this was a huge 15 minutes ahead of Tipp facing into that stiff breeze. Could they hold out? I hardly had the words out of my mouth when Alan Connolly had the ball in net. Bang, bang, bang. Three goals. Game over.
I obviously wasn’t at the match but you could even sense it off the TV that everyone in the ground accepted as much, that the rest of the match was just going to be a procession and a celebration for Cork. And that Tipp just needed to do their level best to make sure that they didn’t get a hiding.
You have to give Tipp credit for making sure that it didn’t turn out like Thurles last May but it’s still hard not to say that this wasn’t a beatdown. Cork took their foot off the gas. If they’d really wanted to keep their foot to the floor, how ugly could the final result have been for Tipp?
In the 50th minute, the score was 3-20 to 0-15. At that stage, it appeared that Cork just decided that they’d enough done, whereas Tipp just had to keep trying to make sure that a 14-point deficit didn’t creep up to 20. In fairness to Jason Forde, Michael Breen, Bryan O’Mara and Darragh Stakelum, who came off the bench, really fronted up. But every other Tipp player lost their battle hands down.
The last thing Tipp needed was to be questioning themselves so close to championship and, while they didn’t throw in the towel like they did in Thurles last May, they still can’t attribute a ten-point defeat to just four scores. To me, the gap between the sides was much wider than just the goals.
Aside from the breeze, Tipp just couldn’t get the ball past the Cork half-back line in the first half. The half-back line in particular – Ciarán Joyce, Rob Downey and Cormac O’Brien - were outstanding. Downey was my man-of-the-match. Mark Coleman did get his run off the bench but Cormac will be very hard to shift now for the Clare game.
After keeping another clean sheet, the Cork defence looks really settled. The midfield partnership of Ethan Twomey and Tim O’Mahony is gelling nicely now too. Everyone was questioning if Twomey was ready but he’s continuing to prove to everyone that he is. That midfield partnership is all the more appealing again when it can release Darragh Fitzgibbon to number 11, which allows Darragh to be the scoring threat he is when playing closer to goal.
It's fitting and right that Cork won the league, not just because they were the best team in the competition by a distance – but because they set out with the full intention of finally securing a trophy.
Yesterday’s pairing was apt because Cork were facing the team that wanted it just as badly as them. Another league final defeat since they last won the title is frustrating but I’d just worry that this might erode a lot of the good that Tipp did up to yesterday.
I’d have my doubts as to whether Brendan Cummins will have the luxury of having his three senior players ahead of Tipp’s upcoming U20 matches from now on ahead of some of the round robin games. Darragh McCarthy looked flat. Sam O’Farrell was reasonable but it's hard to expect a young player to play two big games in the space of less than four days.
On the otherhand, Liam Cahill’s only priority for now is to get out of Munster and it doesn’t matter how he does it. He’ll console himself too with the realisation that now is not the time to be burning it up. Tipp have looked sensational before in the spring and bombed in the summer. So maybe Tipp are just timing their run better this time around. Tipp will also appreciate that no other team has been operating at such a high level as Cork have this spring.
In the curtain raiser beforehand, I felt Offaly looked really nervous, so much so that I think the whole occasion got to some of their younger players like Dan Bourke, Dan Ravenhill and Charlie Mitchell.
Those three are brilliant players and, while they’ve played in All-Ireland U20 and Joe McDonagh finals, a sellout national senior final in Cork was something they wouldn’t have experienced before against a seasoned team with Waterford’s experience. Charlie got a couple of beautiful balls into him in the first half and he just couldn’t control them. To me, that’s just nerves, nothing more.
Offaly will be disappointed but I still think they’ll come away from this happy enough. They were trailing by 14 points at one stage, but they never dropped their heads or stopped trying to do the right thing, with and without the ball. Brian Duignan was blatantly fouled in the square by Iarlath Daly when it should have been a penalty. Even at that, Offaly got it back to four points and who know what might have happened if a penalty and possibly black card was awarded.
Waterford’s set up with the wind was really impressive. They isolated Seán Walsh inside on the edge of the square, both Bennetts came deep and they played Jamie Barron even deeper again, all of which allowed Waterford to savage Offaly on their long puckout.
Peter Queally will be happy with the result but he’ll be a little concerned with the late fadeout. Still, he has three weeks now to get the side physically and mentally sharper again.
For Offaly now, the key going forward is to take those learnings and put them to good use against Dublin in Parnell Park on Saturday week. That’s what the league is really all about but this league was about far more than just learnings for Cork because they needed a national trophy after so long without one.
I know I’ll be accused again of hyping them up but – aside from a poor showing in the second half – they can’t take the sight out of my eyes either. When they want, Cork play scintillating stuff. Champagne hurling. The momentum and confidence they have built up now is irresistible.
And it’s going to be really, really hard to stop.
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