The stumble to September
Seldom has a side flattered to deceive as frequently as this Cork outfit this season and not be put out of their misery.
Conor Counihan’s side has now been in the last six All-Ireland semi-finals and three of the last four finals, and teams with that impressive degree of consistency hardly deserve to be pilloried for reaching yet another one.
But they’re going to be. There were serious errors committed with the selection, the game plan and by the players themselves at Croke Park yesterday in the one-point success over Dublin, but there’s one indisputable fact keeping all that at bay and, arguably, rendering much of it irrelevant for the time being.
Cork keep winning – in itself, that merits prolonged investigation.
Counihan brought no hostage to fortune with him when he sat down to debate the ebb and flow of yesterday’s semi-final with the media afterwards but he said a mouthful when he accepted all that matters at this stage is getting over the line.
“We’re judged on results,” mused the Cork coach. “If I had to do it that way to win, that’s what I’d do. You do what you can.”
Style can wait. He’s seen enough distraught dressing rooms in Croke Park to park finesse until Cork are All-Ireland champions for the seventh time.
What may get them there is a streak of defiance that should earn them some slack from the Style Council. Once Donncha O’Connor’s 54th minute penalty found its target, to bridge that four point gap, you could almost hear the sound of Cork clicking into that zone. Our moment, our place.
Two immediate rebuttals in the guise of Dublin points from Bernard Brogan and Bryan Cullen would not derail them.
With the handbrake off, they started employing the direct, quick ball that seemed alien to them all day. Cork finally discovered that giving the ball to the right player in the right position is no bad way to go about your business.
Eoin Cadogan found Colm O’Neill, one of the key architects of the recovery if only because he knows no other way to play than direct. A free. A point. Dublin were wilting not just physically but mentally. Ross McConnell was reckless in his fouling and Donncha O’Connor was cashing in on almost every occasion.
It took until the 67th minute for Cork to regain the parity they last experienced when referee Maurice Deegan started the game, but from there they burrowed their way over the line. A Paddy Kelly blockdown spared them a frantic finish.
Once more, though, Cork finished, not started, with their strongest formation on the field. Perhaps Conor Counihan listens to Mickey Harte and agrees that’s when games are now won and lost at the cutting edge of the Championship.
But not every side will be as forgiving as Dublin, who should have been further ahead than the 1-8 to 0-7 lead they held at the interval.
Some of us fools innocently predicted this would be the game and the occasion that would elevate Cork to a performance they seem eminently capable of (in truth, we’re no longer sure).
Instead they produced a bewildering first-half display pock-marked with the worst excesses and failings of their system – over-carrying, poor pass selection and putting the wrong players in scoring positions.
Aidan Walsh, Alan O’Connor and Noel O’Leary are not players who will provide creative dynamism. Neither is Walsh a player who should be worked into scoring positions. Yet those errors were repeated with frightening regularity in the first half. Walsh brings power and energy to midfield, but we’ve seen throughout the season he’s not a finisher.
Meanwhile, Paul Kerrigan was virtually redundant in the first half and, for fear of being replaced at half-time I suspect, decided to take matters into his own hands by going direct for a fine point in the 33rd minute.
The management’s display was similarly eccentric. Putting Ray Carey on Bernard Brogan had an eerie sense of deja vu about it from last year’s All-Ireland final selection in defence.
Though there may have been arguments to start Graham Canty, it wasn’t Canty wearing the No 6 shirt – not when one compares the positivity Eoin Cadogan brought to bear in the second period. Canty again tweaked his hamstring, Counihan confirmed afterwards, meaning management will be faced with a similar decision for the final.
However, once again the Cork substitutions worked a treat, from Cadogan to Colm O’Neill to Nicholas Murphy. Cork are getting there. Eventually.
They could not have conjured up a worse beginning. The only thing missing from Bernard Brogan’s sublime finish off his left foot was Hill 16 as a backdrop. For Carey it was the worst possible opening and though Shields took over on Brogan, the Clyda defender steadied himself and walked off the field with his head held high.
On one of the rare occasions Cork picked up the pace in the first period, Shields galloped forward and Alan O’Connor set up Pearse O’Neill whose shot was smothered by Cluxton.
Dublin’s raw full-forward, Eoghan O’Gara, kept Cork in touch with his profligacy, but by the 60th minute Cork hadn’t dented the three point gap that had stood since the first minute.
So where are we on this Cork team? “Maybe it’s just like horses, they wait until the finish to get their noses ahead,” Counihan half-smiled afterwards. “But I wouldn’t want to be backing too many of them.
“We realise we’ve work to do, a lot of work to do for four weeks. People will criticise us and maybe rightly so at times. But the reality is we haven’t gone away in a number of years and we’re not going to go away for a while yet.”
