Magnificent Corofin are in a league of their own

Inside Track with John McIntyre

THE opening ten minutes of Tuesday’s All-Ireland Club football final at Croke Park led us astray. It was the pioneering Slaughneil men who had settled the quicker, led by two points to one – including a majestic score from centre back Christy McKaigue after a lung-bursting run – and were also unlucky not to find the net when Paul Bradley took too long to pull the trigger.

Hot favourites Corofin looked a little rattled and were turning over possession too often for comfort in those opening salvos. It had all the hallmarks of a contest which would go down to the wire, but by the 23rd minute the Galway champions had reminded everyone why no team has been able to lay a glove on them in their current all-conquering campaign.

An unanswered 1-5, with Man of the Match Michael Lundy spearheading their attacking artillery, quickly opened daylight on their Derry rivals. By the end, they had ten points to spare but it could have been more, notwithstanding the fact that Slaughneil spurned an injury-time penalty which can only have been awarded in an act of charity as I could see no foul whatsoever on Cormac Doherty.

After that uncertain start, Corofin were a joy to behold. Their work ethic, support play, pace and class was again exceptional at this level and they are surely one of the greatest club football teams to have ever graced Croke Park, with the obvious potential to rewrite the record books in the years ahead. Certainly, all their rivals at local level must be despairing of even getting close to them in 2015.

The quality of Corofin’s support play was a lesson in selfless running and many county teams would have struggled to live with them on Tuesday. The final was done and dusted at the break as they had established a 1-8 to 0-3 advantage, with Lundy, Gary Sice and Ian Burke proving too elusive for a battling Slaughneil outfit whose credentials had been underlined in successfully negotiating a demanding route to Croke Park.

The decisive moment of the final came in the 15th minute when Sice superbly fielded an unintended aerial bomb from Gary Delaney before presenting Martin Farragher with the relatively routine opportunity of finding the net with a low finish to the corner. Corofin’s overall pace and commitment also ensured they were now winning most of the breaks and, essentially, the second-half was all about holding on to what they had.

Under the widely acclaimed management of Stephen Rochford, the Corofin squad’s single-mindedness and almost self-policing of their own standards has served them well over the past 15 months. They are driven men and, all over the field against Slaughneil, they eventually had too much of everything for an opposition who deserve respect for their breakthrough triumphs in Derry and Ulster last year.

You’d struggle to find a weak link on the Corofin team. Kieran Fitzgerald, Ciaran McGrath, the Silkes’, the Burkes’, Ronan Steede, Lundy, who should probably be sprinting for Ireland, the Farraghers’, Delaney, Sice, Greg Higgins and Tom Healy are now in a league of their own not just in Galway but in Ireland. And one suspects Corofin will probably be exactly in the same position in 12 months time.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.