LEINSTER CLUB SF FINAL: A THIRD CRACKER of a provincial club final in the space of eight days saw Kilmacud Crokes win the Leinster football title for the third time, before a small crowd of 2,000 at Parnell Park.

It brought to an end a week of oratory for the Magee brothers, both more associated with doing their talking on the pitch.

Jonny got to give the victory speech after a breath-taking turnaround in fortunes for Kilmacud whereas Darren had on Thursday performed the best man's speech at his brother's wedding. Comparisons? "Well," said Darren, "his wasn't 14 and a half minutes long". He also reflected on the commitment of having to sacrifice Jonny's stag night for the club's prospects, but added that yesterday was the best wedding present his brother could have. More immediately he described the extraordinary recovery in the team's performance after a first half when they were at best poor.

"We didn't get to grips with it at all. In the second half we went in, composed ourselves, knew what we could bring to the game and at the end of the day we just picked off the scores. We couldn't ask any more from the lads. We just dug deep. We just didn't let Rhode bring that intensity into the second half."

Manager Paddy Carr echoed that central theme. "We didn't perform in the first half. We were a yard off the pace, in a different gear for the entire first half and what we absolutely appealed to was the character in the lads. The key thing was we told them to concentrate on the performance and forget about the scoreboard and the lads emptied themselves out there in the second half.

"You always get one game where what you say you'll do and what you send guys to do just doesn't happen. Our game was about trying to get on top of them in the first 10 or 15 minutes and that just went out the door and that's a credit to them. We've done a lot of work with these lads in terms of playing the game as they see it in front of them."

The win wasn't without its controversies. Cian O'Sullivan, 15 minutes back from a previous suspension, was red-carded for a high tackle and both of the second-half goals raised the possibility of square-ball infringements.

"Anybody who gets a red card will be hurting a lot and we'll have to have another look at it," was Carr's response to O'Sullivan's dismissal. "Any ball that's kicked in high into a square seems to lead to controversy at this time of the year," he said of the goals. "It's very hard for officials to call because it's all split second. But we were a man down and played three-quarters of a Leinster final without a man on a very heavy field."

Rhode counterpart Tom Coffey felt that his players had tired on a sticky field. "Most games are won in the last 10 minutes and that's when we struggled - it was just that they were out on their feet. Conditions are very heavy here and they replaced a few guys and obviously have five or six subs as good as the starting players. They're a heavily packed team and they get a bit of help from outside as well but the lads gave it everything. There's nothing more they could have done. We needed a lifeline with 10 minutes to go and the ball just hopped the wrong way."

The dig at Crokes' ample catchment was unwittingly dealt with by Darren Magee: "I suppose Rhode were kind of building themselves as a parochial kind of town but at the end of the day there's four sets of brothers on our panel as well so we've got a great family in there as well as any other team across the country."