JBM: We got the breaks but deserved the victory

We’ll declare the moratorium immediately.

You know that line about mushrooms and the Cork hurlers? Expect to hear it about as often as Get Lucky over the next few days (both the Daft Punk and Linda Martin versions).

It’s official: that phrase is banned after tomorrow.

Still, the hand of history was, if not on a few shoulders, certainly tightening around some hurleys. Clare were hot favourites yesterday, which was a reminder of 1999, when a team of fresh-faced kids Jimmy Barry-Murphy backed won a Munster final against the head.

You could go back further, perhaps. Clare were favourites to beat Cork more than once in Munster hurling finals in the ‘70s, but one of the rocks they perished on was John Horgan’s immaculate long-range free-taking.

For Horgan substitute Cork’s goalkeeper Anthony Nash, who hit two frees from his own half yesterday over the Clare crossbar.

Tradition is a much-abused term. It’s highly unlikely the young Clare forwards were brooding about games that took place almost 40 years ago, but the benefits of past experience can be more quantifiable.

Take Barry-Murphy breaking down Cork’s approach to yesterday’s game. His stand-in captain Brian Murphy had won the toss and elected to face the wind. That’s the way we like it, said the Rebel boss, though he didn’t phrase it the way KC and the Sunshine Band did.

“We traditionally in Cork like to play into the breeze, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. We generally go against the breeze. We just think it takes time to bed into the game and take 10 to 15 minutes, and we think it works for us.

“It was a very strong wind and definitely before the game we felt it was a six- or seven-point wind, minimum. We were lucky they missed two or three great goal chances, and on the day the breaks came our way, but having said I think we were comprehensive winners.”

A neat appraisal.

Cork enjoyed a stroke of luck when Clare’s rugged wing-forward John Conlon went off early in the game — a departure that angered his manager, as you can read elsewhere, but when Davy Fitzgerald came into the media area he dissected the game as best he could.

“Playing against a storm, it wasn’t easy, and the way we played we put ourselves under pressure. Early in the second half we had a couple of chances and went for goals when throwing it over the bar might have been a better option. The three-point lead, Cork came back to us in five minutes. That was hard. That was tough. We had a small bit of an idea of what we wanted to do in the second half and we didn’t do it.

“If you look at it, we had a lot of possession in the second half but we just didn’t make use of it.”

Barry-Murphy now finds himself in a familiar position: entering a Munster final with a team of youngsters.

They’re not as heralded as the 1999 team but yesterday’s game will bring them on: “We have a lot of young players coming through — I made the point since the start of the year.

“I think a few of them came of age certainly, like Seamus Harnedy particularly was outstanding.

“Daniel Kearney, who has been on and off the team since last year, was phenomenal. All those players were brilliant and I was proud of them all. Then again you could mention the older players like Tom Kenny, Shane O’Neill and Brian Murphy, all of whom showed great leadership.”

Perhaps that was the point we all missed in the lead-up to the game. Although Cork were missing three definite starters, as one of their backroom team remarked, it’s not as though they were starting with 12 men.

Incidentally, as Fitzgerald faced the microphones of the media scrum, a familiar face was visible in one of the framed photographs behind him on the wall.

Peeking over Fitzgerald’s shoulder was Jim Barry standing, for some reason, in a picture of a Limerick hurling side from the ’30s.

As the man who came up with that line about Cork being able to come like mushrooms, Barry was an inevitable presence on a day like yesterday.

Okay then. We’ll give you until Wednesday to use it.