St Thomas' walk into a Dunloy haymaker
DELIGHT: Dunloy Cuchullains players from left, Nigel Elliott, Sean Elliott and Ryan McGarry celebrate at the final whistle at Croke Park in Dublin. Pic: Sam Barnes/Sportsfile
It wasn’t so much the result that spread shock and awe. It was more the manner of the win. Dunloy didn’t just down St Thomas’, they dominated them.
The same as Athenry in 1995 and Portumna in 2004, St Thomas’ walked unsuspectingly into an All-Ireland semi-final haymaker from Dunloy. Here is where we should write that Thomas’ never recovered from said haymaker. But in truth, the Galway champions never got going to have anything to recover from.
We’ll deal further down with the full extent of Thomas’ toothlessness. We must first pay tribute to Dunloy’s complete disregard for the conventional wisdom that said Thomas’ would reach a third All-Ireland club final in 10 seasons and Dunloy would come up short in a seventh All-Ireland semi-final.
For a club that hadn’t hurled outside of Ulster in 13 years, Gregory O’Kane’s charges were supremely comfortable on the All-Ireland semi-final stage. There was no inferiority complex. No hang ups.
What there was plenty of was belief. Confidence too. A bullish confidence you don’t typically associate with Antrim hurling teams on a stage such as this.
They took the game to their opponents as early as the 18th second when Nigel Elliott threw over their opener and never took a backward step thereafter. They never once found themselves behind during an authoritative second-half display.
It was almost unnecessary the amount of Thomas’ goal opportunities they had to foil at game’s end. It shouldn’t have come to that. Dunloy had enough chances in the preceding hour to have long wrapped up the club’s progression to a fifth All-Ireland final and first since 2004.
The first All-Ireland club hurling semi-finals were played in 1971. In the 51 years of the competition, an Antrim club team had reached the final on nine occasions. That figure rose to double digits on Sunday. Antrim involvement in the decider has been so infrequent that a big deal can’t but be made when one of their proud hurling fraternities weaves a path to the concluding day of the club championship.
What stood out about Sunday’s upset - for it was an upset - was how Dunloy kept their opponents on the backfoot for so much of the hour.
Proceedings were deadlocked at 0-6 apiece at half-time. Dunloy should have been below in their boots at the break. They had registered nine first half wides, one of which was a Nigel Elliott goal chance whipped wide. Add onto that an 18th-minute Conal Cunning penalty saved by Thomas’ keeper Gerald Kelly and you’re looking at 2-8 that Dunloy left behind them.
Now, not all of that tally were gimmes. But you get the gist of the point that Dunloy’s interval total should have been much more than 0-6.
The Ulster winners had been beyond wasteful. In this year of soaring energy costs, Dunloy had headed south for the day with the immersion and every light in the community left on.
But this first half prolificacy unsettled them not a jot. Three from the stick of Conal Cunning pushed them 0-9 to 0-6 in front on 43 minutes.
Conor Cooney’s 44th minute free was Thomas’ first score of the second period. It was a footnote in Dunloy’s third quarter dominance. There followed 1-1 from the underdogs to move their lead out to six.
The goal was a thing of a beauty, as was the Anton McGrath point that followed it. The green flag was instigated by a fine Nigel Elliott fetch. He promptly offloaded to Keelan Molloy, who left four red shirts trailing in his wake before slamming the sliotar past Kelly.
The 1-1 stirred Thomas’ belatedly into action. Conor Cooney (0-2, one free), Mark Caulfield, and Damien McGlynn struck four-in-a-row to reduce the gap to two. The gap was still two on 56 minutes. But then arrived a Dunloy three-in-a-row from Nigel Elliott, top-scorer Cunning, and Eamon Smyth to finally take the result beyond their fancied opponents.
St Thomas’ will have plenty of regrets. The result can’t be one of them. Sure, they had their injuries. Neither Shane Cooney nor Darragh Burke were deemed fit enough to start. Two more first-team regulars James Regan and David Sherry were absent. But you’re going nowhere when failing to score from play between the 16th and 48th minute. A wides tally of 15 will haunt them.
If last January’s semi-final defeat to Ballyhale was heartbreak, this was a horror show.
In a year where Antrim secured a return to hurling’s top tier, Sunday’s result is another step in the right direction for the county. After four All-Ireland final defeats, can Dunloy now go and take that last step on the fourth weekend of January.
C Cunning (0-7, 0-3 frees, 0-1 ‘65); Keelan Molloy (1-2); N Elliott (0-2); E Smyth, S Elliott, A McGrath (0-1 each).
C Cooney (0-6, 0-4 frees); M Caulfield, D McGlynn (0-2 each); E Duggan, O Flannery, É Burke (0-1 each).
R Elliott; P Duffin, R McGarry, O Quinn; E Smyth, Kevin Molloy, A Crawford; E McFerran, C Kinsella; N Elliott, Keelan Molloy, R Molloy; S Elliott, C Cunning, D Smith.
A McGrath for Smith (29 mins); P Shiels for Crawford (33, inj); N McKeague for N Elliott (58); G McTaggart for R Molloy (63).
G Kelly; C Mahony, F Burke, J Headd; E Duggan, David Burke, C Burke; B Burke, C Cooney; M Caulfield, O Flannery, D McGlynn; V Manso, B Farrell, É Burke.
C Headd for Farrell (HT); S Cooney for Manso (42); Darragh Burke for Caulfield (53).
J Keenan (Wicklow).
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