Cork’s Croker canter

HOWEVER quickly Conor Counihan and Cork will want to move on from yesterday’s corpse of a National Football League final, it won’t be with the same desperation as Mayo and the rest of us.

Apologists for the GAA’s secondary competition may find themselves defending the format or the funereal atmosphere at Croke Park as a venue today. Yet instead the analysis should be focusing on a disheartening display by the Connacht champions.

Mayo have turned Croke Park no-shows into a patent, but the dearth of desire and aptitude in their ranks as they not so much succumbed to, as prostrated themselves before Cork, was dispiriting from every perspective.