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.

Neither manager John O’Mahony, nor David Clarke and Alan Dillon were brazen enough to offer mitigation afterwards, but Cork coach Conor Counihan appeared almost as disillusioned as he sought something tangible from their 1-17 to 0-12 Division One final win. Given it was the last competitive fixture before Cork head for Killarney – a Tipperary upset notwithstanding – for a Munster Championship clash with Kerry on June 6, the least the Cork coach might have expected was a bit of boot and bollock from the westerners.

Sadly, there wasn’t a glove laid on them.

“We were quite a bit away today (from the intensity they desired), simply because we weren’t pressurised enough at any stage,” accepted Counihan. “When you are leading by six or seven points, it is very easy to play well, but it’s when you are down three or four points that you have to battle and dig deep. You find out more about players then. To be fair to Mayo, it wouldn’t have been their best performance by a long shot.”

Daniel Goulding, who filled his boots with another 1-5, was more stark: “Mayo just didn’t show up.”

John O’Mahony took a length of time before opening himself up to journalistic inquisitions, but when he did, he arrived with his hands up and his defence ready.

“We’ll put our hands up for today’s performance but (the players) won’t put their hands up for the last 40 years or 50 years of performances here,” he protested as Mayo’s Croke Park collapses were tabled for discussion.

Goalkeeper David Clarke also protested that Mayo are not as bad as they looked, but the credit they built up in reaching yesterday’s final is an empty account now.

“At the start of the National League people were talking about us getting relegated so there has to be a positive somewhere along the line to have made the final. As we progressed through the league we realised that there’s a large gap between ourselves and the likes of Kerry, Tyrone and Cork.

“There has to be a problem somewhere when we keep getting beaten up here. Today there wasn’t the intensity. We knew that there’s a gap between us and the likes of Kerry, Tyrone and Cork and we didn’t fool ourselves into thinking we’re the best team in the country, but we’re working toward sit.”

Picking through the debris for positives is easier for Cork, but not by much. A 15-a-side training game last Tuesday night in Páirc Uí Chaoimh offered the Cork management a clearer insight into their summer planning than they, or the 27,000 supporters, gleaned from yesterday’s 70 minutes.

Bishopstown’s Jamie O’Sullivan stuck like a barnacle throughout to Mayo’s solitary bright spot, Aidan O’Shea, and though the full forward won more than his fair share of contestable ball, he was immediately clamped by the young full- back. The duel in microcosm was packaged in the 19th minute when O’Shea momentarily had sight of goal, but his low shotwas impressively smothered by O’Sullivan.

Another of last year’s U21s, Aidan Walsh, was selected as the official man of the match though the Cork selectors will be pleased by the manner in which Donncha O’Connor began, and remained, on the front foot while the game was, technically-speaking, competitive.

FIVE of Cork’s attack hadscored from play by the 20thminute, while Conor Mortimer was the first Mayo forward to register from play in the 31st minute. Such trends were sprinkled across the piece, but Mayo’s self-belief deficit was more damning than any statistic. Afterwards Clarke suggested football’s big three of Cork, Kerry and Tyrone were operating on a higher plane at present, but that disregards the fact this Mayo squad won in Cork, Tralee and Omagh earlier in the competition. Pointing, as they did, to the fact it was “back to two points just after half-time” brings straw-grasping to a new depth.

Once Paddy Kelly opened up a five-point gap (0-12 to 0-7) on 50 minutes, you could stick a fork in this one. With eight minutes left, Daniel Goulding netted the game’s only goal, but the delight was in its manufacture, a sublimely weighted ball to him from Ciarán Sheehan.

Counihan doesn’t like the notion of an embarrassment of attacking riches, but the fact remains that if he can get the chemistry right up front, Cork’s is the most potent attack in football at present.

Sheehan may play his way into Championship contention, as could Kevin McMahon, Colm O’Neill and John Hayes. Pearse O’Neill was one of a raft of players unavailable yesterday. The only pity is Fintan Goold didn’t grasp the opportunity the final afforded him. Counihan revealed afterwards John Miskella is recovering well from a groin problem, but the prognosis for Eoin Cadogan and Anthony Lynch was less clear cut. What John O’Mahony would do for such problems.