Munster SHC First Round/Cork 1-18 Clare 1-11: An unseasonal chill in the air lent an accurately unpromising ambience to yesterday's Guinness Munster hurling first-round match at Thurles. After a brawl had erupted between the teams as they took to the field the atmosphere readjusted itself to strangely unheated levels.
Considering the frequency of their meetings in recent years (eight in 13 seasons) the counties haven't produced that many epics but this year's instalment was particularly disappointing. Clare supporters weren't taking the chance of the match failing to meet expectations and largely stayed away leaving the red-and-white predominant in the crowd of just under 25,000.
Cork were uncomplicated winners. Although Clare steadied themselves and found a second-half response, which prevented the match ending up in a rout, there was never any question about who was going to advance to meet Waterford in next month's semi-final.
Both sides showed changes before the start. Timmy McCarthy, selected at full forward, hadn't recovered from a hamstring injury and was replaced by Kieran Murphy from Sarsfields in a direct swap on the edge of the square.
Clare as expected shuffled the deck extensively with only Brian O'Connell and Kevin Dilleen remaining in selected central positions. Diarmuid McMahon moved from centre forward to centre back, Fergal Lynch from full forward to centre forward, Brendan Bugler from centre back to centrefield and Colin Lynch from the middle to full forward.
The most startling action of the afternoon came before even the parade. Strangely, the teams entered the field together and jostling broke out as they emerged.
This appeared to have subsided but Cork players broke off from gathering for the team picture and hostilities broke out with players pairing off and squaring up, leaving the Competition Control Committee with some disciplinary business to process this week.
Mercifully it wasn't a sign of things to come and although referee Pat O'Connor showed six yellow cards the match never expanded on the unpleasantness of those early incidents. All of the excitement failed to get Tony Considine's side off to a flying start and their pulse rate faded once the ball was thrown in.
Niall McCarthy started strongly with the first point and setting up the second for captain Kieran Murphy.
Clare had to wait until the 10th minute for a first score, Colin Lynch feeding Jonathan Clancy for a point from the right wing.
That made it 0-4 to 0-1 but it could have been a goal worse. Clare's debutant goalkeeper Philip Brennan spilled a dropping ball and replacement Kieran Murphy rapped the loose ball off the crossbar.
In general the challengers were struggling. Their half backs were under pressure and operating too loosely, centrefield too frequently on the back foot and the forwards losing out to the champions' practised defence in which the renowned half backs were well on top, Ronan Curran in particular outstanding.
But Cork appeared seized with lassitude once their opponents got on the scoreboard and a free from Niall Gilligan followed by a Barry Nugent point reduced the margin to one, 0-3 to 0-4, by the end of the first quarter.
The suspicion that Cork won this match by hardly needing to get out of third gear was implanted in the second quarter when they effortlessly pulled away once Clare had moved on to their shoulder with a string of points from McCarthy, full forward Murphy and three Joe Deane frees for a five-point half-time lead, 0-9 to 0-4.
During the opening minutes of the third quarter the match looked like it was going to disintegrate competitively. John Gardiner, who had a fine second half, popped a free from around 85 metres in the 38th minute and two minutes later supplied Kieran Murphy (Sarsfields) with a well-guided pass and he made ground before flipping the ball in to Patrick Cronin, who crowned his debut with a goal.
The same player added a point within a couple of minutes, his scores sandwiched by a Tom Kenny point - a particularly poor commentary on the defence that lost the Grenagh player twice en route to the score.
A delightful piece of skill from Ben O'Connor helped Cork maintain the 11-point lead at 1-13 to 0-5 but somehow Clare recovered enough composure to put together a scoring run of their own that spared the team and management an altogether more humiliating outcome.
It was Nugent who started the push and despite a frustrating afternoon he ended up with four points from play, the second and third coming either side of Niall Gilligan's goal in the 47th minute.
A good delivery from Colin Lynch set up Gilligan and he kept his wits under pressure to score what was the county's first championship goal against Cork since Stephen McNamara's strike in Limerick 10 years ago.
Further points by Nugent and Andrew Quinn cut the margin back to five but Clare needed to maintain the run on the scoreboard. Instead Cork reasserted themselves and Clare couldn't get any closer.
A succession of Ben O'Connor scores in the closing 10 minutes plumped out the winning margin to seven but that was a distortion of the match that could have ended with twice as much between the teams had replacement Neil Ronan passed inside to Ben O'Connor instead of going himself in the 64th minute and had Brian O'Connell not got back to thwart another replacement Cathal Naughton by clearing his shot off the line.
