Lundy inspires Corofin to magnificent semi-final triumph

Corofin 1-14

St. Vincent’s 1-9

THE great dream lives on and it grows more vivid with the approach of dawn. Corofin mightn’t be there yet, but last Saturday in Tullamore they took one giant step in their bid to win a second ever All-Ireland club title.

This was champagne stuff . . . full of fizz, plus intrigue and all played out at a pace that ensured no one in the crowd of just under 4,200 could take their eye off the action for one second, or breathe easily until the final whistle sounded.

Corofin fairly silenced some of their critics who had claimed that they ‘hadn’t beaten much’ up until now when they ended a two year plus unbeaten run of the Leinster and All-Ireland champions.

St. Vincent’s might have had some of the bigger names coming into this match but the old Frank Morris mantra of ‘the team being everything’ really came into its own at O’Connor Park when the pressure was at its most intense.

Corofin’s moment of destiny came in a 90 second spell starting in the 22nd minute when Gary Delaney cracked a penalty off the Vincent’s crossbar.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, St. Vincent’s counter-attacked swiftly, resulting in Kieran Fitzgerald being adjudged to have fouled full forward Ciaran Dorney in the square — Tomás Quinn rattled the Corofin net with the resultant penalty.

That effectively was a six point swing and Corofin, after playing nearly all the football up until that juncture, now found themselves trailing by 1-5 to 0-7 in that crucial 10 minutes before the interval.

When Brendan Egan tacked on a quick point, Corofin now faced a foe that they hadn’t met over the course of the previous 12 months — they had to come from behind after enjoying a period of dominance.

Most of the Corofin supporters — who seemed to make up the majority of the crowd — probably would have settled for parity at the interval, but in the end they got a lot more than that.

Six minutes before the break, Michael Lundy — who had ran riot through the first half — slipped a deft pass into the path of Martin Farragher, who dribbled a low shot past Michael Savage in the Vincent’s goal. Corofin were back in business.

Lundy capped off what was probably the best individual first half display of attacking football since the days of Michael Donnellan and Padraic Joyce, with a top-of-the-range left footed point on the stroke of half-time, and the Vincent’s storm had been weathered.