SHANE McGRATH paused at the crossroads underneath the old stand and his delay was fatal. Half a dozen vultures with tape recorders descended from the shadows and demanded words from him.
“Great game,” he said still searching for a breath. “I haven’t been as tired in a long time after a game. It was very physical, very tough. Every team has their purple patch and they hit theirs with a bang in the second half. They were popping balls over the bar, getting their confidence back. We knew though we were going to finish strong in the last 10 minutes. We were happy with how we finished. There’s a great team spirit there.”
The heat had been a major factor in the game with the sun coming straight down on top of the players as the pace intensified from the brisk trot of late league action to the flat-out, helter-skelter of championship.
“The game was so fast, going from league into championship is hard and that was championship at its best. Balls going everywhere, chaos in midfield.”
Tipperary’s ointment jar of happiness had the significant fly in it of a Cork renaissance in the second half which nearly undid everything. A goal hauled back, a saved penalty, and an excruciatingly narrow miss by Pat Horgan. And Tipp won by a width of a goal. Things to talk about on Tuesday night, one imagines.
“We lost our composure for a bit,” said Conor O’Mahony, “but we showed character and we battled back. They came at us, we went back at them. We didn’t slack off at all, they just got their period of dominance. It is how you deal with that.”
Tipperary manager Liam Sheedy, looking slightly more drawn than normal, offered due praise. “My immediate reaction is just delighted to have squeezed through with a victory. Cork put in a massive performance. If they had taken the lead we would have had a job getting them back. They came to win and they almost did. Massive credit to my lads. We got the goal just after half-time and it was the score really that won the game. It made the difference.”
The reaction was typical. The winners have yet to work out if they are a good team who can win playing badly, or a team that played well and almost got caught by opponents who should be dead and buried.
“We know we have a lot to improve on,” concluded O’Mahony. “Clare are waiting for us in the long grass. No illusions. The Clare match in Limerick will be really tough. We are no way near the finished article. We’ll drive on. I’m looking forward to that already.”
Yards away Cork manager Denis Walsh was quietly and studiously unravelling his first afternoon of thunder. He had almost pulled a famous coup from the hat at the first time of asking.
“Realistically we had the chances,” he said. “When we got hit by that goal we had regrouped at half-time but then we got hit by the goal straightaway. I thought our players were tremendous, just brilliant in the second half. There was a 10-minute spell in the first half when we didn’t kill the game and they went away from us.We got a bit of momentum back before half-time.”
Cork had gone into the game with a question mark over their ability to regain the intensity needed at this level. They set themselves right on that score.
“We felt good enough at half-time in that the breeze was going to take the ball straight into the full-forward line a lot of the time. The chances were there. At this level you must take them. The big question mark was whether we could get to the right level of intensity. That 10-minute spell in the first half, it went away from us between the 20th and the 30th minute. They scored five or six points. That is where the pace of the game caught us for a bit.”
Walsh was quietly philosophical about Timmy McCarthy’s disallowed goal. One incident doesn’t win or lose a game. The trends are what does it.
“The whistle went before he put the ball in the net. What could you say. Seeing that there was a lot of other passages of play let run quite a long time, what I am talking about is on a few occasions players were being pulled back and the advantage was given but there is no advantage to a player who is being slowed up, we were caught for over-carrying a few times. In most of those incidences the player was being pulled back a little bit. We ended up being penalised three or four times for over-carrying the ball. They proved costly enough”.
John Gardiner who led this team through a tough winter of no hurling was happy to get back to leading Cork in a more familiar arena. The result though ached.
“We are very disappointed, we thought the game was there for the taking. Thought we did a lot of hard work against the stiff breeze in the first half. Couple of points down we had set a platform for ourselves. Tipp got that goal with a deflection and it was a blow. We kept battling . . . if Timmy’s goal was allowed it would have been a different story but we can take some positives from it.
“New fellas came in and were super. Eoin (Cadogan) had a great game and Conor (O’Sullivan) was good. A lot of people had us written off. It’s breaks. Pat Horgan had a chance that went wide. Another day we would be driving on from there.”
