Kieran Shannon: Don't take for granted how glorious Gillane adorns finals
Although this league final certainly won’t rank among the great games Limerick and Cork have served up for us in recent years, our main takeaway shuffling out of the Clare End Terrace and walking along the Ennis Road yesterday evening was that we had again just witnessed greatness in action that could mistakenly be taken for granted.
Yesterday Aaron Gillane collected his 15th major medal under John Kiely – now, to go with the six Munster titles and five All-Irelands there is a fourth league medal.
Gillane has been critical to many of those occasions and successes. Yesterday was not his first time blasting a ball to the Cork net in a national final; in the 2021 All-Ireland final his 15th-minute strike past Patrick Collins effectively decided that game, putting Limerick three points up after which they’d never relent.
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It wasn’t the first time the Gaelic Grounds saw him rifle a goal past an opposing keeper with a trophy on the line either; the 2023 Munster final ultimately swung on his goal that day and how Clare could not cope with the Patrickswell man who eventually took them for 1-11.
Gillane though has a particular thing for league finals. The 2019 final against Waterford up in Croke Park that let us all know this was a group that wasn’t satisfied with just the one All-Ireland, was shaped and adorned by his ingenious first-time volley to the net, not unalike Jimmy Barry-Murphy’s more celebrated strike against Galway in ’83.
In the 2023 league final he again volleyed superbly to the net on his way to racking up 1-7 on Kilkenny down in Páirc Uí Chaoimh.
Yesterday he emulated, possibly even surpassed, that level of performance and excellence. Cork tried everyone on him; Seán O’Donoghue at first, then after he had to hobble off injured, Ger Millerick, while Ciarán Joyce and Niall O’Leary would also have had spells in his orbit. They all went about their task manfully. Ben O’Connor namechecked O’Donoghue’s effort after the game. More than once Millerick shrewdly batted the ball to the ground to deprive Gillane possession and for a teammate to sweep up and clear from danger.
But yet he was always lurking. Always an outlet. Always a threat. And often a joy. With one effort in the second half he didn’t even half-turn towards the goalposts in striking the ball over the bar; while the umpires by the Clare End Terrace were reaching for the white flag, Gillane remained facing Nickie Quaid’s goal.
The Cork crowd on that Clare End Terrace was quite agitated yesterday. Partly because of their team’s patchy, underwhelming performance, partly because of the referee’s, and largely because of the amount of time it took Aidan O’Connor to complete his freetaking routine: Darragh McCarthy has company and good company at that on that count.
But when Gillane assumed free-taking duties when the game was on the line, they couldn’t complain. He didn’t dally, just like he didn’t miss. By the game’s end he had for the fourth time scored at least 10 points in a league final, finishing with 0-3 from frees to go with his 1-4 from play.
The day could have ended up a lot worse for Cork. When Gillane struck for his goal, they trailed 1-11 to 1-2; combine that with the second half of last year’s All-Ireland final and you were talking about them being outscored 4-25 to 1-4 in 60 minutes of national finals. They rallied. In fact when Mark Coleman brought them back to within two points entering the final minutes, it looked like they could even repeat last year’s Munster final triumph at the same venue.
They wouldn’t. Gearóid Hegarty, while not yet quite back to being Robocop, came up with some big plays, just like Gillane, not just making themselves available for ball but demanding it.
In truth the game, and Cork themselves, never flowed. But there was an upside to it. Of their four starters here that didn’t start in last year’s All-Ireland, two of them, Tommy O’Connell and William Buckley, were their two best performers, each adding a dynamism to their line of the field.
And they know only too well that things didn’t finish too badly for the side who were last year’s league runners-up.
