A final pairing nobody could have predicted
Nobody there on that occasion saw Clare and Cork as a potential All-Ireland final pairing; when they met a couple of months afterwards we didn’t see much to change our minds either.
Yet here we are.
Cork’s smooth improvement has been matched by Clare’s growing confidence, which found full expression in yesterday’s win over Limerick in the All-Ireland semi-final. It ended, creating a novel final pairing that nobody, it’s fair to say, foretold earlier this season.
It’s fair to say that Clare were quicker into the game, with captain Pat Donnellan showing the way. In the opening minutes he took a punt, running upfield to give Colin Ryan an option, gathering the ball and hitting a point.
Limerick, by contrast, hit four wides in a row before opening their account on eight minutes, and they never really hit a purple patch.
Credit Clare: they kept a man spare at the back and exploited the space up front superbly. The traditional alignment we saw last week between Cork and Dublin seemed so different it might have been taken out of the museum under the Cusack Stand for an airing.
John Allen made no excuses after the game.
“We made poor use of the ball, our conversion rate was poor, our free-taking wasn’t great...” said the Limerick manager. “All of that added up. Having said that, probably at half-time, if we had converted the frees we missed in the first half we might have gone in only two points down instead of seven points down.
“But that’s grabbing at straws. We weren’t winning any line, we weren’t dictating the game, and at the end of the day, unless you’re winning a lot of the battles you’re probably not going to win the game, and we weren’t winning enough of the battles. That’s the bottom line.”
His Clare counterpart Davy Fitzgerald was trying to rein in expectations with the final whistle still echoing in Croke Park.
“To get over a semi-final is fantastic. Was it a super performance? Ye may say it was but I don’t think it was. We gave Limerick too many stupid opportunities and they missed a lot of scores in the first half.
“And if we do that to Cork, Cork will punish us, and we know that. We have to learn lessons from today and hopefully we will.”
Still, they hit only five wides...
“Jesus, that’s a change for us, only to have five wides, I’ll tell you that. Normally you’re looking at 15 or 16, that’s our average most weeks, so I don’t know what the story is! I hope we didn’t use it all up today.
“Every game you play you want to start good. It was a big day for us today, we were written off by a lot of people, so we were, even though we had beaten Limerick a few times last year. We were probably unlucky in the championship as well, so we thought we had a good chance today.”
Limerick will have a Monday of what-ifs and might-have-beens that will probably stretch to Tuesday and Wednesday, but they’ll be back.
For Clare managing the next three weeks will be a challenge. They have a young team who will be keen to avenge their Munster championship defeat against their All-Ireland opponents: opponents, moreover, who will be without the man who did the critical marking job in that earlier game in Limerick. Brian Murphy shackled Tony Kelly that day but the Cork defender remains injured and Kelly is hitting his stride at just the right time.
“I’ve been involved in three losing semi-finals and won the other one as a manager, it is tough and you have to learn lessons,” said Fitzgerald yesterday.
“Even myself as a manager, you’re learning all the time you’re going along. Even today I’m hoping I’ll learn more lessons because I know the next day is going to be a massive challenge — absolutely massive — and we’ll need to improve on our performance today to have any chance.”
True enough. John Allen made one significant point about Clare having to replicate a near-flawless display in the All-Ireland final, pointing out that not every day all the frees go over, but he was still reticent about picking a victor.
That’s a man with All-Irelands as a player and a manager.
With respect to Jimmy Breslin, Can’t Anybody Here Predict This Game?
