Rebels unveil a new lethal weapon

IT turned on a close-in free and a penalty. Of course it did.

After a week of conflation, interpretation, and a little trepidation, not to mention months of focus on 20-metre lines, roll-lifts, striking and goal-scoring, we should have known that Cork versus Clare would find a hinge in the very incidents that the GAA world seemed fixated upon for the last seven days.

In one sense, the existence of the game as a Munster SHC semi-final was subservient to its status as a laboratory to examine the solidity of the new dead-ball dispensation, and the game was less than quarter of an hour old when the first experiment was set up.

Seamus Harnedy won a free for Cork just outside the Clare 20 metre line, and the entire crowd borrowed a trick from observers at a tennis game: looking at the free at one end of the field, then turning their heads to the other end, to see if Anthony Nash was moving upfield.

Nothing.

Patrick Horgan teased a little with a lengthy run-up but hammered the ball well over the bar.

Cork needed that score. Early on they conceded cheap frees to Clare, but as the half wore on, Conor Lehane and Alan Cadogan came into the game with quality scores. Clare saw that and raised them with sweet strikes from Podge Collins and Tony Kelly. There was a championship feel to the occasion which owed nothing to the crowd, or the sun, and a good deal to the keenness of the exchanges.

With a few minutes to the break, Cork won another free outside the 20-metre line, and this time nobody looked for Nash, anticipating a tap-over from Horgan.

The Glen Rovers man deceived the crowd, however. His strike deserved a dictionary entry under venomous, and fizzed past the Clare defenders: goal.

Clare retorted on the very stroke of half-time, John Conlon sweeping home a loose ball in the Cork square to make it a three-point lead for the Rebels rather than six.

A large deputation from Clare loitered at the tunnel entrance to say hello to referee James McGrath but diplomatic relations appeared to be maintained.

Cork stretched out to a seven-point lead in the second half before Clare rallied, and the men in red were four points ahead when we had the penalty.

Again Harnedy drove through and was grounded, and we saw the reality of the new law in action, Horgan placing the ball a few metres behind the 20-metre line.

He cracked home his second goal of the game having made contact well behind the line: meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Clare kept hunting, and late on sub Darach Honan got a tap-in to make it respectable, but Horgan’s penalty had deflated the contest. It was one of those scores that mean more than the three points in the ledger: it fed Cork’s belief and punctured something in the opposition.

“We left it up to Patrick himself, and Anthony (Nash),” said Cork manager Jimmy Barry-Murphy afterwards when asked about the penalty.

“We decided that before the game, that if we got a penalty, that Patrick would see himself how it was going and how he felt.

“If he felt like going for it, go for it, no recriminations if he went for it and missed it — that’s our attitude. It worked our way today.”

The Cork boss joked about his reputation for tactics but made a salient point about getting the match-ups right (which sounds a lot like tactical thinking, but never mind).

Cork won far too many of the individual battles to lose the game yesterday, and only really faltered when Clare had an extra pair of hands in their half-back line during a good second-half spell. For Davy Fitzgerald, there’ll be a sense of deja vu to the proceedings: he was a still point in a turning world on the Thurles sideline during yesterday’s second half, just as he was 12 months ago in the corresponding fixture between the counties.

“I am not going to make excuses,” said Fitzgerald afterwards.

“Because at the end of the day we had 70 minutes out there to win and we didn’t win. Cork won but I am pointing out the obvious things to you as well. I am not going to hide behind any issues. At the end of the day Cork were better on the field of play today. It doesn’t matter about decisions or lack of decisions they were the better team today and I really feel that, but there are some things that need badly need to be looked into in the GAA and one or two bodies need to be looked into.”

Though clearly unhappy with James McGrath’s refereeing, Fitzgerald has other challenges. One is to exploit last year’s Hurler of the Year: Tony Kelly was a peripheral figure, literally, for long stretches yesterday, and Clare will always struggle when their playmaker is stuck at corner-forward, far removed from the engine room.

With Páirc Uí Chaoimh about to shut temporarily for business, there may be an air of destiny about Cork’s forthcoming date with Limerick in the Munster final.

As for tactics, Barry-Murphy might nod in agreement with the American politician who said the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. If Cork maintain the individual standards they set yesterday then they’ll impose whatever tactics they wish on opponents. The penalties look like they’ll look after themselves.