Champions prove that goals pave path to All-Ireland

SOMETHING interesting happened in the first minute in Thurles yesterday.

Cork created a chance that would have given them a flying start had Paudie O’Sullivan taken it, but Brendan Cummins did what Brendan Cummins so often does, touched the shot away and the underdogs had missed the opportunity to land an early uppercut.

In the event they would not create a better goal chance all afternoon, and against this Tipperary team points alone do not constitute the bread of life.

Something equally interesting happened in the second minute. John O’Keeffe, Tipperary’s debutant left half-back, dinked a cute little diagonal ball into space for Lar Corbett, all alone inside in the twilight zone between the half-forward and full-forward lines. As it happened Donal Óg Cusack did what Donal Óg so often does, spotting the danger quickly and dismantling the bomb before it could explode.

It was a hint of things to come, however, a hint that Tipp would ask questions of the Cork defence and the Cork defence would be hard pressed to answer them all correctly. Thus it turned out. Three goals to none tells the story of the afternoon. The challengers produced a performance of substance and heart and no little poise. But the champions produced a knife and employed it where it hurts. That was the alpha and the omega of it.

A day for making a statement. That’s what we said here on Saturday and that’s what it turned out to be. Tipperary’s statement was not Obamaesque but no matter. They wore their status as MacCarthy Cup holders lightly. They demonstrated the priceless ability to get critical scores when it mattered. In short, they did the job, and that was all that anyone could and should have asked of them. Anyway, high-flown oratory on the opening day of the championship is always a waste of good words.

But here’s the interesting part. Tipp weren’t the only team who made a statement yesterday. Cork made a statement too, a statement about their togetherness and cohesiveness and sense of purpose. A statement that they will be heard of again later in the summer. A statement that they are potential All-Ireland semi-finalists — and not semi-finalists who will be beaten by 12 points this time around.

Two points behind with six minutes left? They would have settled for that beforehand. Eight-point losers at the final whistle? A small travesty. Such is the price of sloppiness against champions, though. Give them an inch and they’ll gut you as soon as look at you.

When he watches the video this week Denis Walsh will see much to take succour from and a few things calculated to prompt him to tear his hair out — specifically, in the latter regard, the succession of balls his team dropped into Brendan Cummins’s grasp. At least this can be worked on. And at least, as the cliché has it, they were creating the chances to drop them short.

A bigger problem for them is, and will remain, the lack of goals. O’Sullivan’s first-minute venture apart, Cummins had little more than basic household chores to occupy him. If and when Cork run out of road this season it will be because they don’t score those goals that blow games wide open. If Eoin Kelly is once more hoisting the silverware on the Hogan Stand podium it will be because Tipp do.

The opening 20 minutes was all very neat, all very studied and all a little tepid. Move into space, make yourself available for a colleague, take the pass, run on, offload. One didn’t have to be a dust-rising-in-the-square man to wish for something slightly less bloodless.

It was Patrick Maher who provided it. Now Maher won’t be winning any style competitions any time soon, but what he brings to the Tipp forward line is balance and ballast. Noel McGrath, oddly quiet yesterday, and Eoin Kelly can do the fancy stuff; Maher will hew the wood, draw the water, do the running and, occasionally, kick down the door. As he did for Lar Corbett’s opening goal and again when mugging Eoin Cadogan for Benny Dunne’s late clincher.

In between, three minutes after Corbett struck, Shane McGrath with one of those beautifully fluid turn-and-strikes of his set up Kelly to pounce for a retread of his goal at Páirc Uí Chaoimh three years ago. The winners hadn’t done much up to then, but with that double-barreled blast they did what the best teams in sport do, going from nought to 60 in a matter of seconds. And put it this way: if one of these teams was going to magic two goals out of thin air it was never going to be Cork.

A day for making a statement, then. Cork made one. Tipperary made the more resonant one. Can they win successive All Irelands for the first time since 1964-65? Early days, naturally. But, on this evidence, is féidir leo.