Cork’s late bloomer

IF YOU’RE looking for a snapshot to define the input of Sean O’Brien to the Cork footballers, try the 2006 drawn Munster final for size.

Cork arrived in Killarney that summer after stuttering past Limerick in the semi-final and the expectations of them trumping Kerry had leavened accordingly.

But Cork unleashed an early challenge of such heat and ferocity that they lead 0-7 to 0-1 after 29 minutes, O’Brien’s input to that scoring spurt symptomatic of the team’s play. Twice he pounced to win the kind of breaking balls that could just as easily have lost him a limb instead of setting in train a move for a teammate to score. Kieran O’Connor and Fintan Goold may have been credited with the points but the scores had O’Brien’s fingerprints all over them.