Portumna put the icing on good weekend for Galway

Inside Track with John McIntyre

IT wasn’t the walk in the park which characterised their demolition of De La Salle in March of 2009, but there was rarely a moment’s anxiety as Portumna swept to a fourth All-Ireland Club hurling title at GAA headquarters on Monday to become Galway’s greatest parish team of all-time. We had long suspected it, but now they have the honours to prove it.

At their peak, Portumna were generally regarded as having the edge on the county’s two other great hurling powers, Athenry and Sarsfields, but there are no doubts now after comfortably ending the fairytale run of Carlow’s Mount Leinster Rangers at Croke Park. Surprisingly, it was a goal-less final but the Galway champions didn’t need them as they collected the Tommy Moore Cup with the minimum of fuss.

As a spectacle, it may have fallen someway short of the cracking football showdown which followed, but Portumna won’t mind one iota as they gradually pulled clear of the battling if limited Carlow men with team captain Ollie Canning having a majestic outing in their attack and another long serving soldier, Eoin Lynch, the stand out performer in the team’s defence which never came under sustained pressure despite the best efforts of Denis Murphy, Paul Coady and, initially, Edward Byrne on the forty.

Apart from their deep reservoir of experience, Portumna were also too slick for a Mount Rangers outfit which paid the price for some clumsy tackling in a final the outcome of which nearly always appeared inevitable despite the Leinster title holders establishing an early 0-3 to 0-1 advantage. Typically, they continued to graft to the end and picked off some fine points, but it appeared that Portumna rarely had to step outside their comfort zone in justifying the hot favourites’ tag.

Mentally, the build up to the All-Ireland final must have been difficult for the Portumna camp given that they were generally perceived as being ‘past the post’, but they are around too long to take anything for granted and having ended three barrens seasons in Galway last October, they were always going to be tuned-in for another big-day opportunity the following March. This great team was thought to be over the hill at the end of the 2012 county championship, but instead they have regrouped magnificently to re-establish themselves as the standard bearers of club hurling.

It didn’t help the continuity of Monday’s decider that referee Barry Kelly let little or nothing go, with the late dismissal of Rangers’ defender Edward Coady harsh in the extreme. It had no bearing on the result, but symbolised the over-diligent officiating on the day. Mount Carlow Rangers again lacked nothing in commitment but, at times, they were short-staffed up front and once they fell behind, those tactics were always going to tell against them. Portumna are just too well organised and creative to allow defensive-minded opponents to nullify their threat.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.