Kieran Shannon: History will be on Cork's side in All-Ireland final
Cork played Tipperary in this year's league final but Tipp are now a different animal to the side the Rebels defeated in April. Pic: Piaras Ă“ MĂdheach/Sportsfile
Well, this wasn’t the trilogy or repeat final we were expecting, was it?
After Cork cantered past Tipperary back in early but sunny April to win their first league title in 27 long years, the consensus was that Limerick and Clare would accompany them out of Munster. Tipp, for all their progress and effort during the group stage of the league, were hardly going to leapfrog the teams that had won both the league and All-Ireland in 2023 and 2024 and the odds-on favourites to complete a similar double in 2025.Â
It was still too soon in Tipp’s development, with an admirably frank Richie Hogan going so far as to say on that “the quality of player is just not there for them” and that Ronan Maher was probably the only of them that would make the Cork starting 15.
A month later, upon Limerick in Walsh Park sweeping aside a Waterford team who had beaten Clare there by almost an identical scoreline, the race for the Mick Mackey and Liam MacCarthy trophies had seemingly been reduced to two. With John Kiely having justification to claim that his team’s graph was trending towards going through the roof, the overriding sense was that their round-robin game against Cork in the Gaelic Grounds would be merely a foretaste of two imminent finals to come.
Yet here we are, and only months after the first Cork-Tipp league final in 65 years, we’re now going to be treated to our first-ever Cork-Tipp senior All-Ireland final.
The latter, of course, has been only a possibility since 1997. Tipp held up their end that year by getting to that final via the inaugural backdoor, but Cork had no such luxury after being beaten earlier in Munster also by the all-conquering unit that Ger Loughnane’s Clare was that year.
Since that novel Clare-Tipp final we’ve had four further all-Munster All-Ireland final pairings: Clare-Cork (twice), Limerick-Waterford (2020) and Limerick-Cork (2021).
We’ve had one Cork-Tipp minor final before (back in 2007 when Brendan Maher ended up lifting the Irish Press cup; Sunday week won’t be the ageless Noel McGrath’s first time playing Cork on the last day of the season). We also had back-to-back U20 and U21 All-Ireland finals in 2018 and 2019 when the Liam Cahill-managed teams emerged victorious each time; six of Tipp’s starters last Sunday featured in at least one of those games while 10 of the Cork team that got game-time against Dublin on Saturday evening also played in at least one of those underage finals.
But as for the county’s big boys each playing each other in the biggest game of the lot, this is a first.
Before going into what such a final pairing implies for both counties, it’s worth looking at what it means for others.
Brian Lohan and John Kiely are now all the more likely to remain on in their positions. Tipp advancing to the final is further proof that just because you’ve had an off day or even a down year doesn’t mean you can’t bounce back and contend the following year; in fact, you’re likely to do so.
In five of the seven years we’ve had since the advent of the round-robin, a team that failed to emerge from Munster (or during Covid, failed to even reach the All-Ireland quarter-finals) has responded by reaching the All-Ireland final the following year (Tipp 2019; Waterford 2020; Cork 2021 and 2024; now Tipp in 2025). The trend is self-evident. Finishing fourth or fifth in Munster is no deterrent to finishing in the top two in Ireland the following year.
In the five championship games Clare or Limerick played Cork or Tipp this year, they only lost two of them – one by two points, the other on penalties. They were both still right there this year. Regroup and refresh and they will still be right there next year.
This year’s final pairing though also says something about Leinster, or at least its championship. From 1998 to 2019, every All-Ireland final bar one featured either Kilkenny or Galway. Now we’ll have our fourth all-Munster final in six years, and an eighth consecutive year whereby a team from the southern province walks away with the Liam MacCarthy.
Kilkenny rarely exit the championship in any other way but gallantly. Since being dethroned by Tipp in 2016, they’ve only once been soundly beaten – by Tipp again in 2019 after losing Hogan to a red card before half-time. Every other defeat they either took the eventual victors to extra-time, were ahead at half-time, and-or only lost by a couple of points: in every one of those losses, from Waterford and Limerick in Thurles back in 2017 and 2018 to Tipp back in Croker last Sunday, they played a handsome part in making it one of the games of that particular championship.
But the continuous similarity of those defeats with their last-quarter fadeouts will be held against Derek Lyng more than it will be used to defend him and being the humble kind he is, he may conclude before anyone else that for things to change, it should start with him.
There’ll be a school of thought that Cork did themselves no favours by running up the score against Dublin on Saturday; that the way to enter a final is having done just enough in the semi-final. But one of the ways Cork avoided falling into the same mindset trap as Limerick was by being ready to win by 21 in their efforts to ensure they won by at least one.Â
It was also a reminder to themselves as much as anyone else as to their goal-scoring power. After being held to just one goal in both games against Limerick and just the two in securing results in Munster against both Clare and Waterford, this was a reminder of their March-April net-finding potency; when they took Tipp for three first-half goals in the league final; put up four on them in the championship, as they had on Galway in the league, the game after they’d hit Clare for six in Ennis. Reserving a season-high seven for an All-Ireland semi-final was a reminder of how they’ve been out to raise their performance level through the year rather than try to retain or regain it.
Facing them in the final though will be a side who carry serious goal-scoring power themselves. Central to Tipp beating Cork in those U20 and U21 All-Ireland finals was Cahill’s and Mickey Beavins’ thirst for goals and the likes of Jake Morris’s capacity to score them; over those two finals and the 2019 U20 Munster final as well, Tipp outgoaled Cork 11-4 on their way to picking up all three trophies.
This season, his team have put up four on both Kilkenny and Clare. Cork held them goalless in both games in Páirc UĂ Chaoimh this year but having given up at least one against everyone else since, Tipp will be expecting and hunting to net at least two on Sunday week.Â
As much as Cork crave goals under Donal O’Rourke’s coaching (“There’s no greater roar than when a Cork player hits the back of the net,” he noted earlier this year), Tipp similarly seek and can create such emotional contagion in Croke Park. Think of Lar in 2010; Bubbles in 2016; Seámie Callanan continuing his 2019 goalscoring streak from the first day of the championship right through to the last; McGrath, Morris and Forde all netting before half-time on Sunday; when Tipp billow the net up in Croke Park they make themselves and their crowd believe it’s going to be their day, their year. Every All-Ireland final Tipp have won since 1962 they’ve never been out-goaled by the opposition.
History is on Cork’s side in another way. At the top we pointed out how this is a repeat of the league final. It will be only the eighth time that the same two sides have met in both national finals in the one year. In all seven previous repeat pairings (Limerick-Kilkenny in 2023; Kilkenny-Tipp in 2014, 2009 and 1950; Cork-Dublin in 1941; Limerick-Dublin in 1934; Kilkenny-Limerick in 1933) the league winners ended up also being the All-Ireland winners.
Only thing is, Tipp are a different team and animal to the one that played Cork back in April. The quality of player is there, and if Richie Hogan had it back now, he’d have more than just one Tipp man on any combined team with Cork.
A collection of the latest sports news, reports and analysis from Cork.
