Rampant Cork Rebels rock Donegal with goal rush

CORK 4-11 DONEGAL 0-19: Tell it not in Gath, as the Bible puts it, but we had a largely enjoyable game of football yesterday in Croke Park. Given recent suggestions of the apocalypse for the sport, a reference to the good book seems appropriate.

Cork and Donegal served up a free-flowing NFL semi-final, one marked by slick passing and clever support play rather than the negativity and ill humour we’ve come to expect recently. If you accept the necessary health warnings then you were surely entertained by proceedings.

Cork won, but they’ll certainly be aware of those caveats, a term used afterwards by manager Brian Cuthbert. He wasn’t holding up the final quarter, for instance, as a model of savage, championship-level intensity.