ALL-IRELAND SFC FINAL REACTION:THE BURLINGTON Hotel lobby. The morning after the night before. We have been here before. Cork men staring at their feet, fidgeting as they wait for the agonising coach journey followed by a mind-numbing homecoming.
Yesterday, finally, was different. The players are up early and moving from friends to family with a wink and a hug. “Just shows you, boy,” an elderly Cork sage informs the media who had congregated in a corner. “If you stick at it long enough, your clock will turn.”
On that note, we simply had to seek out Nicholas Murphy. “Long time waiting,” said Murphy before boarding a minibus to Crumlin’s Children’s hospital. “Twenty years, like. For myself personally it has been 10 years so it was great to finally win it. We got so close a few times but the lads finally delivered.
“This time last year there was no guarantees we would be back here. It is a long road. We certainly took the long route. You take every year as it comes. Thankfully . . .”
The throw-in to initiate the second half was Murphy’s first chance to make an impression. Darragh Ó Sé was up in the stand so for once, he was the senior statesman contesting an All-Ireland final high ball.
It ended up in Peter Fitzpatrick’s hands. The ball was shifted on but Murphy’s focus remained on the young Down midfielder. Fitzpatrick’s midriff was wide open as Murphy drove into him. The memory of Tadhg Kennelly’s hit on Murphy 12 months previously sprang to mind.
Kalum King was next. The powerful Down centrefielder was given lessons in high fielding from the master.
Graham Canty was not long arriving as the Rebel spine was suddenly filled with men who could not lose another All-Ireland.
When did John Miskella know he would be starting ahead of the Cork captain?
“To be honest I had a fair idea last week. I didn’t mind as long as we won was the main thing.”
Canty, if fully fit, was a good bet to shadow Marty Clarke but it was Noel O’Leary who calmly wandered over to the Down playmaker. O’Leary thrust out his hand before playing a hugely disciplined 70 minutes.
“Noel is our fittest player when he wants to be,” Miskella continued. “He can sit on a player and do a job. He’s done it before.
“I think we got the defensive match-ups right, even though Down were fairly economical with their chances. Any chance they got they put it over, whereas we were fairly wasteful in the first half. Thank God we won – that’s the main thing.
“Look, we are Cork footballers so criticism comes,” adds Miskella. “We are second-class citizens down in Cork after the hurlers. We get it in the local press, we get it in the national press but at the end of the day we are always tipped to go far. We came over the line.
“Media? We didn’t think about it, didn’t look at it so it didn’t affect us. It was about what we thought ourselves.”
Miskella conceded that much criticism was justified as, until Sunday’s second-half display, the pace, intensity and accuracy of the 2009 All-Ireland semi-final defeat of Tyrone had not been witnessed.
“It is a fair criticism that we played much better football last year. We did. But we came out on the wrong end of it. I suppose we were fairly calm going into the second half. We were creating chances in the first half. We just needed to up the intensity. It worked.”
There was another issue: Conor Counihan’s supposed inability to settle on his best 15 throughout the campaign. “Conor’s been saying all year that there is 30 in the squad and if you are not starting in the first 15 it is no slight on you as you will probably be coming on for at least 20, 25 minutes.
“When the game is in the melting pot we got the likes of Graham Canty and Nicholas Murphy who came on yesterday. Nicholas was awesome when he came on at half-time. He probably gave us the impetus to drive on.”
Now they can rest.
