ON THE face of it, all was well at Semple Stadium, Thurles, yesterday. Cork and Kilkenny qualified for a first league final meeting in 10 years – the former after a quick-pulse second half victory over Tipperary, which saw them home by seven points.

But for Cork manager Jimmy Barry-Murphy the satisfaction at repositioning his charges so comprehensively this season to date was mitigated by the serious injury to captain and goalkeeper Dónal Óg Cusack, who was carried off after 17 minutes with a suspected Achilles tendon injury, which is feared may end his season and pose question marks over the playing future of the hugely influential 35-year-old.

“Not good,” said Barry-Murphy about the situation. “He’s getting an examination tomorrow but it looks like he is out for the summer, Dr Con (Murphy, team doctor) just told me he’s gone to Dublin and it looks like an Achilles tendon problem. It’s very disappointing, shattering for himself.

“We are disappointed for him. He’s been a great captain for us, a great leader for the players in the dressing room, so, it’s very, very disappointing from that point of view.

“At half-time he said, ‘Go away and look after the players. Don’t mind about me. Cork hurling is all that matters and drive on with the team.’”

Anthony Nash took over in goal and although he will have been disappointed to concede two goals, he stood up to the task and landed a whopping free from his own 65.

“We wanted to get to the final,” said Barry-Murphy. “We were hoping. We played Tipperary here two weeks ago and we knew it was going to be a very, very hard game again, but we wanted to get to the final. We made that quite clear. We spoke to the players all week about it. We’d like to get to the league final and that’s what we are pleased about.

“I’m delighted. I said at the start of the league we wanted to develop a panel of players, have competition for places and we have managed to do that right through the league and I think proved that we have players on the bench who were able to come in and start today.”

Yesterday’s attendance of 15,424 was as disappointing as the previous week’s paltry turnout of just over 11,000 for the football semi-finals, considering the presence of home county Tipperary and three others within reasonably convenient radius.

Throw-in time for the first semi-final was delayed by 15 minutes because of a malfunction in the ticketing machines. Clare and Kilkenny could have been forgiven for wishing that it might be delayed a bit longer as they had to play through a first-half deluge.

In the end All-Ireland champions Kilkenny chalked up the expected win over their newly-promoted opponents, finishing nine points clear. The only goal came from Matthew Ruth but was slightly controversial, having its origins in a disputed line ball and coming after Eoin Larkin had appeared to have overcarried before his shot was deflected into Ruth’s path.

Clare manager David Fitzgerald clearly had issues with the decisions and appeared to take the matter personally.

“Myself, I honestly believe the referees have something in for myself . . . . I’ll be asking everyone to keep a close eye on the championship and see do they take it out on me and my team because it has happened now more than one occasion as far as I am concerned with myself. They ignore me completely.

“They might not do it to the Brians and the Declan Ryans of this world but when it comes to me you are not allowed say anything or you’re not allowed have any animation, you’re not allowed question anything. So that’s disappointing.

“Can I take my beating? 100 per cent. Kilkenny were a better team, 100 per cent, no qualms. We would not have won the game on that decision. But the decisions annoy me so they do when they can be got better than that.”

Predictably his Kilkenny counterpart Brian Cody was more measured in his reaction to leading the county to an eighth league final. So far he’s lost only two, most recently last year’s to Dublin, who were relegated to Division One B after defeat by Galway in Saturday’s play-off replay.

But Kilkenny won’t be dwelling on that. “It won’t be making up for last year’s (defeat) because it is done and dusted,” said Cody. “Two teams going to play and we’re one of them and we might as well be there.”