Big sporting injustice just avoided in titanic hurling final

Inside Track with John McIntyre

IT was a game from the ages and for the life of me, I still don’t know how Clare weren’t crowned All-Ireland senior hurling champions for only the fourth time in the county’s history at Croke Park last Sunday. They did so much right and performed with such unrelenting quality and verve, and yet had to engineer a dramatic injury-time point to force a replay.

In another epic final which left the near-capacity crowd breathless, the fact that Clare had to rely on a last-gasp equaliser from raiding corner back Domhnall O’Donovan, of all players, summed up the admirable economy of a Cork team which was living off scraps for much of the final. On three or four occasions, the Rebels were in danger of being swamped by fierce Banner surges, but each time they somehow found a way to survive the crisis.

As a spectacle, Sunday’s showdown will take some beating. The atmosphere was electric even before the action got underway, but what subsequently unfolded simply had the attendance throbbing. Spectacular scoring, brilliant individual feats, a multitude of talking points and enough twists and turns to have done justice to any best-selling Agatha Christie crime thriller.

With two youthful teams setting a furious pace from the start and Clare pulling a tactical surprise by opting for an orthodox formation even if their half forwards operated deep and hardly stood still for a moment, there was drama almost from the off. Darach Honan had the opening point in the third minute and Cork never led until Pat Horgan sent over a classic score in injury time – typical of the Rebels, the inferior team for much of a great struggle for supremacy, but now on the brink of poaching an unlikely triumph.

That scenario would have represented the GAA sporting injustice of the year and though Clare must have been sickened to the guts when Horgan split the posts, they had been responding magnificently each time Cork dealt them sucker-blows and kept their composure again to manufacture O’Donovan’s superb equaliser. Loose talk of a fair result permeated all round Croke Park but, in reality, Clare were significantly the better outfit, had dominated large tracts of the match and should never have found themselves in a position where a tremendous team performance was about to go unrewarded.

It is to their immense credit, however, that Clare survived the concession of three second-half goals. Each time Cork found the net, Davy Fitzgerald’s men simply drove up the field to try and undo the damage. Their players never blinked, stayed remarkably focused and maintained a ferocious work ethic even in the most trying of circumstances. It represented a huge endorsement of the team’s character and temperament. Clare obviously have exceptional hurlers, but equally possess men of great fortitude.

Of course, you could also describe Cork in the same effusive tones. On the ropes for long periods of the final, losing most of the individual battles and with half of their forward making little or no impact, it amply reflects the quality of their finishing – the men in red only registered three wides – that they managed to earn a second chance when other teams in their predicament might have been well beaten. The Rebels don’t do panic and possess such a level of inner-belief, particularly on the big stage, that you just can never write them off.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.