Cork have momentum. Can they hold onto it?
One of those results that not even the cutest among us could succeed in playing down. A result to be hoisted up and drank from. A result to lift and relaunch Cork football.
Rare occasions are a crowd of 6,223 rattling the hinges of Páirc Uí Rinn in organic celebration at a Cork football victory. Even rarer again are Cork football victories coming along in packs of four.
Leaving aside the brief stay of rehabilitation in Division 3, you’d have to go back to 2014 for the last occasion Cork stitched together four successive league wins in the same spring. These sort of runs just don’t happen where Cork football is concerned.
And while we refuse to be swept up in the giddiness that permeated at full-time and carried towards grand pronouncements regarding promotion and a first return to Division 1 after 10 years away, you just cannot overstate the importance of this Cork victory.
The importance is in the numbers. They do all the talking.
The Division 2 table shows the race for promotion has been reduced to three teams. Cork sit two points clear of the other two. They have the head-to-head on one of those by virtue of this exhibition in hanging-on. They head up to the other this Sunday.
To go four points clear of Derry with only two rounds to play would leave Cork virtually uncatchable. To do that, of course, they must go to Derry and win.
If yesterday at home pulled them through the full vortex of emotion that a single match can manage, we’d be foolish to think the trek to Celtic Park would be any less straightforward.
Yesterday was important for the simple fact that Cork didn’t trip over themselves at the very moment a swell of positive noise had taken residence around John Cleary’s camp.
Cork football being the maddening existence that it is, the hosts very nearly did trip over themselves.
Of all the servants and outstanding service given to the red shirt, it was Ian Maguire and his 56th minute red card that jeopardised their unbeaten status.
Maguire and Colm O’Callaghan had tormented Seán Brennan’s restarts. Four of Brennan’s first six kickouts were not retained. The graph didn’t do much improving thereafter.
In the words of Royals boss Robbie Brennan, Cork were winning the midfield battle “hands down”.
Supremacy in this department shifted upon Maguire’s exit. An exit precipitated by an off the ball altercation with Meath sub Adam O’Neill.
Cork’s six-point supremacy on the scoreboard shrunk to the minimum. An Eoghan Frayne two-pointer and white flags from Ciarán Caulfield, Jack O’Connor, and Jack Flynn put the visitors on the cusp of yet another come-from-behind success.
With six minutes still remaining and only a single point difference to eradicate, Brennan was confident of finishing on top.
“Yeah, I have to say I did [think we were going to go on and win], and even towards the end there I fancied us to get the shot away for two to level it. We set it up, but Caulfield didn’t get his strike away. We thought it might be an inside mark then for Adam O’Neill, but wasn’t.”
Of Meath’s many regrets, including the second-half goal chances of James Conlon and Jordan Morris smothered and stopped by Seán Meehan, Daniel O’Mahony, and Micheál Aodh Martin, not to mind an earlier Jack O’Connor point that had the look of orange about it, they will rue their decision not to take aim when a controversial two-point free was given against Steven Sherlock in the closing minutes.
The Cork crowd were united in their disgust at referee Conor Dourneen over the decision. Behind by two after Chris Óg Jones had temporarily lifted the siege, Meath’s decision to instead play short was baffling.
Seán Meehan snuck in a hand and forced the turnover. Luke Fahy snuck in his entire body when Caulfield’s two-point leveller landed short into the villain O’Neill. Seconds remaining, Fahy’s block to deny a winning Meath goal could yet prove the decisive moment of this strengthening promotion push.
The madcap finish made a footnote of so many. Young Dara Sheedy, on his second start, kicked four from play. Mark Cronin kicked a pair of first-half two-pointers. Chris Óg’s 33rd minute goal was part of an unanswered 1-3 for a 1-15 to 0-11 interval advantage. Minus All-Star Seán Rafferty, Meath's defence was a picture of frequent chaos.
“I was in a position here two years ago where we lost the first three games, and you are going back into training the following night and you are trying to get fellas up, but when you win games, fellas come in with a bounce in their step. Momentum is everything,” Cleary concluded.
Cork have it. Can they hold onto it as they held on here?
C Óg Jones (1-4); M Cronin (0-5, 2tp); S Sherlock (tp, 0-1 free, 0-1 ‘45), D Sheedy (0-4 each); S McDonnell (0-3); L Fahy, C O’Callaghan, I Maguire (0-1 each).
E Frayne (1-3, tp); J Morris (0-4, 0-1 free); J Flynn, R Kinsella (0-3 each); S Brennan (tp free), A Lynch, J O’Connor (0-2 each); S Coffey, C Caulfield (0-1 each).
MA Martin; M Shanley, S Meehan, D O’Mahony; M Taylor, T Walsh, L Fahy; C O’Callaghan, I Maguire; P Walsh, D Sheedy, S McDonnell; M Cronin, C Óg Jones, S Sherlock.
R Deane for P Walsh (54); S Walsh for Sheedy (60); R Maguire for Taylor (63); D Buckley for O’Callaghan (64); K O’Donovan for Meehan (68).
S Brennan; S Lavin, R Ryan, B O’Halloran; D Keogan, S Coffey, C Caulfield; B Menton, J Flynn; C McBride, R Kinsella, C Duke; J Morris, E Frayne, A Lynch.
A O’Neill for McBride (35); J O’Connor for Duke (HT); J Conlon for Lynch (47); J Scully for Ryan (58).
C Dourneen (Cavan).
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