The bottom line clarifies everything. After an All-Ireland final of mesmerising chaos and staggering twists Clare were in front when the counting reached an exhausted stop; by then there had been nearly 100 minutes of breathless play. In the hurling championship delirium is a recurring condition. Yesterday it gripped Croke Park until all reason was lost. Nobody missed it.
Clare won their fifth title with a surge of scores late in the second half of extra-time, three points in as many minutes, but in this game every lead was unstable and terrorised. Having rescued themselves in stoppage time at the end of normal time Cork wriggled in the quicksand again and made another lunge for an overhanging vine.
Robbie O’Flynn made a brilliant catch 20 metres from the Clare goal, and as he made room for a shot his jersey was tugged. Either the referee didn’t see it or simply ignored the infringement but play continued and O’Flynn concocted a shot with a short back swing that missed by a foot. There was no time for the puck-out.
For this group of Clare players it is a glorious vindication of their mulish refusal to quit. This season they had struggled to recover their best form of last year or the year before, and when they lost twice to Limerick in Munster their base camp had moved further down the mountain. They never stopped looking up.
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They trailed Cork by seven points after just 14 minutes yesterday and Cork missed an easy chance to go eight points clear. All over the field Clare were being made to chase and make do without the ball. So they took a standing count and kept swinging.
In a game like this turning points have the lifespan of a Mayfly, but Aidan McCarthy’s goal 17 minutes into the first half started a run of 1-3 without reply just when Clare were gasping for oxygen. Shane O’Donnell, the Hurler of the Year elect, scored two of those points and single-handedly made the goal for McCarthy with a cocktail of plays: a tackle, a turnover, a solo, a shimmy, a pass. In the first half, and not for the first time this season, O’Donnell was unmarkable. Surviving that period in the game shaped everything that happened next.
“I suppose we just started poorly,” said Brian Lohan “We were conscious that Cork all year have raced out of the blocks, and we thought we were going to be able to handle it but then they really started well.
“But we hung in there, we toughed it out. We got back into it before half-time. How we responded [was crucial]. Aido [Aidan McCarthy] getting that goal brought us right back into it, and then we were able to relax a bit and I think we hurled well from there on. So I suppose that and, look, Tony [Kelly] just caught fire in the second half and on into extra-time.”
Kelly and O’Donnell are their rotating taoisigh. The ankle surgery Kelly underwent towards the end of last year impacted his season until about a month ago. He came off the bench against Limerick in round one and wasn’t even fit enough to sit on the bench in round two. In Munster he didn’t fire a shot. Before Sunday the only game where he had played with freedom and exuberance was against Wexford in Thurles.
On Sunday his big plays were glittering ornaments on this final. Four minutes into stoppage time, at the end of normal time, he scored a whiplash point over his right shoulder that was fit to win any All-Ireland. He could have made that swing in a phone box without rubbing the glass.
When the teams were level, three minutes from the end of extra-time, he forced a turnover under the Hogan Stand, about 50 metres from the Cork goal, and when the ball returned to him he bamboozled a Cork defender before firing his shot over the bar. That score ignited their run for home.
His goal, though, midway through the second half, was one of the greatest ever seen in a final. Leave him explain it. “Yeah, just there was a couple of red bodies and I was trying to avoid them and take my point. Often goals are made by the defender rather than yourself. You don’t take the ball and think ‘I am going to score a goal here.’
“It’s often that you take what is in front of you really, so when the defender came I didn’t want to get blocked down so I had to sidestep him and then another defender came so I had to sidestep again. And once you’re through you have to have a rattle at a goal.”
The finish was played with soft hands and a runaway imagination.
That goal put Clare three points clear midway through the second half. In the time that remained Clare went three points clear on two other occasions and each time Cork pegged them back. Apart from the opening quarter Cork played in spasms and never with the flow that has characterised their most devastating performances this year. But Cork teams have cracked easily, too often, over the last 10 years and this team have renounced that sin. To the bitter end they fought on their backs.
Cork’s season was transformed by long puck-outs, and keeping three players inside. They wouldn’t have survived in Munster or reached the All-Ireland final unless they had the guts to try something different. Yesterday, though, it didn’t work.
Cork hit 38 long puck-outs and won just 10 of them. From a total of 47 puck-outs they harvested just seven points. On the other side of the ledger Clare sourced 3-8 from their restarts. In a one-point game that difference was enormous.
Maybe that was the bottom line.
