When it’s like this, everything else dissolves. There’s no split season, no GAAGo, no cashless tickets keeping the poor oul’ fellas out on the streets. All there is, all that exists, is the next ball falling from the sky and everyone agog, alert, amazed. Who’s going to grouse and moan about letting the championship breathe when they’re struggling to breathe themselves?
It had to be this way. For Cork to end Limerick’s Homeric assault on the record books, only an epic would do. The numbers tell the story. Cork won by 1-28 to 0-29. The game had 99 shots in 77 minutes. There were 82,300 here to witness it. Everything about the day felt maximalist, as if it would have been some sort of limp parody for the five-in-a-row attempt to just quietly fizzle out.
To Limerick’s undying credit, it wouldn’t have taken much for it not to have ended at all. Cork needed three saves from Patrick Collins in the Cork goal – two of them bullet-catchers from Aaron Gillane and Gearóid Hegarty. Limerick pucked wides that they haven’t on other days. But though their radar was off, their defiance was total. Cork had to beat them by about six points, just to beat them by two.
“The group of guys that are inside in that dressingroom are incredibly dedicated,” said John Kiely afterwards. “They shape their world around hurling – where they choose to live, where they choose to work, where they choose to go to college. They have shaped their world around this group, this team.
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“There’s an incredible togetherness and unity within the group and they’re going to hurt now, there’s no doubt about that. The hurt is going to be god awful. I have no doubt. But it is what it is. We haven’t tasted defeat very often. But any time we have, it has tasted very sour.”
For Cork to inflict it on them, so many had to throw into the pot. The last time Brian Hayes played in Croke Park, he came off the bench for the Cork footballers as they were getting minced by Dublin in the 2022 All-Ireland quarter-final. Here, he rifled 1-4 in his first All-Ireland semi-final and took Man of the Match. You keep on keeping on.
Collins has taken a world of shade during his time between the posts for Cork but he had a signature game here. Declan Dalton’s long-range shooting took over a second half in which he scored a mile of points. Sean O’Donoghue spent the afternoon getting scorched by a never-better Aaron Gillane and still won a vital ball near the end to lift the siege. Everything counted.
In the midst of it all, Patrick Horgan shook off a jittery first period that included a botched 20-metre free to whip five points in the second half. It pushed him past 700 career points and means he only needs to score three in the final to overtake TJ Reid at the top of the all-time scoring charts. Asked afterwards if the number was in his head at all in that first half, he wasn’t having it. “Nah,” he smiled. “I’m not going for 700. I want a lot more!”
This is Horgan’s 17th season playing senior for Cork. In a fortnight, he will play in his third final. The reception that met him as he came off near the end hardly needs examining for subtext – so much of the build-up will revolve around him maybe finally getting his All-Ireland medal. But standing outside the Cork dressingroom afterwards, he talked about it all in far simpler terms.
“Honestly, even coming up here, for a lot of people that talk was that the prize was the All-Ireland final. I actually didn’t see it that way and I don’t think many of the boys did either. For us, the prize was getting to train together again on Tuesday night.
“We’re such a tight group. Outside of hurling, we’re always on to each other, we’re always doing recovery stuff together. Just being down the Páirc next Tuesday night was really important. We didn’t want to cut contact with the lads and go back to our clubs for months without seeing each other. That’s certainly what I wanted anyway. We’ll have gym tomorrow, train Tuesday. That’s gold.”
Outside in the world, the hubbub begins. You can’t have a semi-final weekend explode like this without people getting jiggy for what’s next. Limerick are gone, Liam MacCarthy is attainable now in a way it hasn’t felt since pre-pandemic.
“There’s going to be fantastic excitement in Cork over the next two weeks and there’s going to be fantastic excitement in Clare,” said Pat Ryan. It’s going to be hard to keep the hype down in both counties. There hasn’t been a different Ireland champion since 2019. There’s going to be fierce excitement.
“It would be impossible to quell the hype down in Cork, to be honest with you. We get confident after winning a Tiddlywinks match.
“So look, from our point of view, we’ll just have to do our best to keep it down. But look, I said this when I got into the job, fellas asked me what would be the success of this job. If you’re a Corkman, you have to win an All-Ireland. Simple as that. If you don’t do it, it’s not successful.”
That’s the prize, then. The next fortnight will be golden in Cork and Clare. Let the great world spin.
