‘Tribe sharper’ — but Cleary baffled by ref’s timekeeping

He described it as ‘nitpicking’ afterwards, but there was no mistaking how flabbergasted John Cleary was by David Gough’s allocation of one minute of injury-time in Limerick on Saturday.

According to our stopwatch, the Meath referee blew for full-time at exactly one minute, just as his fourth official was indicating as much.

It left the Cork supporters and Cleary frustrated considering the number of stoppages in the second half.

Following on from Marty Duffy’s decision to allow the same amount of time in Sunday’s Division 1 final, much to the chagrin of Tyrone, the subject of timekeeping has raised its head once more.

“I couldn’t believe it because I was talking to the linesman and he was of the opinion there would be three or four [minutes]. I didn’t know what happened when the referee blew the final whistle. Somebody said there was 40 seconds gone but look that’s nitpicking.

“But to me the [Galway] goalie seemed to be down [injured] for at least two minutes and the referee just said after there was no injury-time for subs.

“I think there was more than one minute. We had to get a goal in whatever time was left, but I think another minute or two would have been right.”

Cleary acknowledged the sharper team won on the day, but took pride in how his players responded after going nine points behind in the second half.

“We started very well after half time. We had two points on the board in the first couple of minutes then Galway broke up [the field] and the goal was a killer and gave us a mountain to climb. Before we knew it they hit 1-2 and we were on the ropes.

“I knew our lads would rally and Brian [Hurley] got a great goal that put us right back in the game. But we needed to get it down to a point or get it level — they always had that cushion and on a night like Saturday when the ball was slippy they got men behind the ball and broke up and got their scores in the end.”

Galway’s forwards could hardly put a foot wrong in the first half, but Cleary’s analysis at half time indicated Cork simply weren’t converting their chances.

“We had a lot of opportunities. Galway kicked some very spectacular scores. Looking at the stats and things like that at half time, I think we had 14 scoring opportunities up around the goal and we only took five, whereas they had 11 and took nine.

“We were disappointed at half time that they had sat back and we soloed into them maybe instead of letting the ball in quicker. When they overturned us or got the ball they let the ball in very quickly and the forwards are very sharp. That was probably the ultimate difference in the end.”