Too hot to handle

ANOTHER one for the labourers at Páirc Ui Chaoimh yesterday. Kerry’s 70th Munster title hardly survived the night in most people’s minds, but it’s one in the eye for those who sniggered that they could only win with cigars and champagne.

Not that Ulster's finest will pop up from their scrum and fret at the prospect of being suffocated by Kerry's work ethic, but yesterday's 1-11 to 0-11 victory had elements to it from page one of the coaching manual build everything from the back.

The second page suggests taking one game at a time. There was no-one in the Kerry camp yesterday wondering how the new sod is bedding in at Croke Park.

"We've been preparing for this game for 12 weeks," said fitness coach Pat Flanagan. "The (training) schedule was aimed at the day of the Munster final, and nothing more. Those conditions are as difficult as it gets and they still had a bit of running in them at the end."

It would be comforting to employ some cliché appropriate to the stifling conditions seething cauldron, white heat of battle, pot-boiler etc but it was none of these things for the 32,000 in attendance.

Kerry were competent, but nothing more. Cork were energetic and well-organised, but their intent was fatally undermined by an absence of thrust. In search of a goal to rescue the match, they spent the last five minutes retaining possession and growing old.

Man of the match Tomás Ó Sé agreed: "They tried to work it in too much.

"If you look at Armagh, there are times when they throw a few high balls into the mixer. But Cork seemed to want to hold onto possession too much.

"They rarely looked like scoring a goal, because by the time they worked the ball in, we had all our defenders around, so they couldn't penetrate."

Though it took a Declan O'Sullivan goal in the 42nd minute to give Kerry the lead for the first time, there were already red and furrowed brows at the Blackrock End.

Cork's midfield offered an encouraging platform, but they were only a point in front at the break (0-8 to 0-7). O'Sullivan's goal was the purest form of turning point thereafter Cork's toil had an increasing sense of desperation about it.

What didn't help was the marauding incursions of Tomás Ó Sé into their domain, twice yielding points for the man of the match.

His older brother, Darragh, is too close to 30 for his own liking, but like Seamus Moynihan, he showed yesterday that the prospect of becoming the first county in fifteen years to win back to back All-Ireland is an alluring one.

At Pearse Stadium, all the ingredients were in place for a classic Mayo-Galway showdown but instead a drab encounter ended with Galway old guard Michael Donnellan, Padraig Joyce and Paul Clancy tilting the balance in the home side's favour.

Galway manager Peter Ford, who has won seven out of seven U21 and senior championship matches with Galway, praised his team's determination in forging an 0-10 to 0-8 victory.

Donnellan was man-of-the-match with a fine display, particularly when he moved to full-forward midway through the first-half.

"We closed down the space on Mayo very well, I thought. That meant they had to run at us and this sucked them forward," said Ford.

"The result was we could hit them on the break and we got some good scores that way."

Joyce was a key figure in carrying the game to Mayo and his strong running engineered a number of crucial scores. Clancy did the unfashionable work with a superb marking job on Ciaran McDonald, and this knocked the wind out of Mayo's sails.

Afterwards, the Mayo team and management exited the dressing-room post haste, leaving centre-back James Nallen to field media queries. "It was a poor game for players and spectators," said Nallen.

Meanwhile, if Armagh are eventually crowned Ulster champions for the fifth time in seven years, they will have done so the hard way.

At Croke Park yesterday, they plucked another get-out-of-jail card from the dealer's deck.

Steven McDonnell, whose 68th minute goal salvaged a draw with Tyrone nodded when he heard his manager Joe Kernan declare: "It didn't look good with about 10 minutes to go, but the beauty of this game is that there is always hope. I am not going to say a draw was the fair result, but we are happy with it."

This was Tyrone's Ulster final to lose. Inspired by a wonderful attacking display from Stephen O'Neill, they looked set to dethrone the Ulster champions.

But on top of McDonnell's uppercut, Paul McGrane nailed a fine point to save the day and force a replay, again at headquarters on Saturday week.

"There's something in this group of players. They just never give up," Kernan said.

Additional reporting from Liam Horan, Galway and Mark Gallagher, Dublin.