He’ was a complete passenger. Like Ronaldo nearly. Seemed to be more worried about 700 points than anything else.
Cork can improve again next season with him gone.
I nodded my head in agreement as I read but as we know sport doesn’t always work out that way. We said the same for Clare a decade ago. I think to win one you need to be a great side, but to put together 2/3 in a row is an insurmountably difficult challenge, it would be interesting to see can Cork achieve that. Course they have to win in 2 weeks but I believe they will.
The hunger, fitness levels, luck, everything you need to go and win the likes of a 3 in a row are very rare to come by. Such as the fact we’ve only seen it a small handful of times in living memory.
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Here you go bucko
Eamonn Sweeney: Rebels ride to the rescue to breathe new life into lost summer
Cork supporters in Páirc Uí Chaoimh. Photo: Stephen McCarthy / Sportsfile
A Cork win over Limerick today would turn a great hurling season into one of the greatest. It’d be just reward for the team that saved the summer.
The GAA hierarchy don’t deserve the Cork hurling fans. It exploited them to fund the GAAGO service, scheduled their All-Ireland quarter-final match at a ludicrous time and generally disrespected them.
Yet the Cork factor is what makes today’s semi-final feel like a final. A capacity crowd seems likely. That’ll be a new semi-final record. Last year Limerick and Galway drew 59,739 supporters, Kilkenny and Clare 48,360. Only Cork can do this.
Quantity has been matched by quality. Even by their own passionate standards, there’s been an extraordinary fervency to Cork’s support this year. Raw emotion and palpable need have animated the stands and terraces. The Rebels are on a grand crusade.
That’s what you get with an All-Ireland famine of 19 years and counting. When Cork eventually lift the Liam MacCarthy Cup again it’ll be an occasion to match the victories of Galway in 1980 and Clare in 1995.
Their wait won’t have been as long, but counties calculate time from different historical perspectives. That’s why Tipperary’s first Munster title for 16 years in 1987 was one of hurling’s great occasions.
The unlikely nature of Cork’s revival has heightened the feverish atmosphere. Defeats by Waterford and Clare meant most people at the home match against Limerick expected to witness final nails being hammered into the coffin. But it wasn’t a funeral, it was a resurrection. Cork electrified the championship by winning a classic.
The failure to broadcast that game remains the most spectacular indictment of the RTÉ/GAA gombeen man lash-up. Resentment of the cosy cartel arrangement at their expense added to the fire in Rebel bellies.
Victory over Limerick would still have meant nothing had Waterford drawn with Clare. Had Mark Rodgers missed a last-second 65 to give Clare a one-point win, it wouldn’t have mattered what Cork did against Tipperary. All over Thurles Cork fans stared at screens, prayed and bit their nails as he lifted and struck. Rodgers found the target and the reprieved Rebels scored a record win.
There was even, mad though it now seems, speculation the champions might contrive a draw against Waterford to eliminate Cork. That was how dangerous Pat Ryan’s team seemed at the time.
They don’t seem quite so dangerous after faltering performances against Dublin and Offaly. Ominously powerful displays by Limerick against Waterford and Clare mean belief in Cork’s regicidal potential is now almost entirely a Leeside phenomenon.
But if Cork don’t stop Limerick, nobody will. The champions already look to have the number of Clare. Cork’s unpredictable upside gives them a puncher’s chance.
That unpredictability cuts both ways. It’s just three years since Limerick scored the highest total in All-Ireland final history when humiliating their traditional masters. Five of the defenders, plus the goalkeeper — who by half-time had conceded enough to lose four of the previous seven deciders — will start today. Limerick will start 12 of the same team.
In that final, Cork’s corner-backs Niall O’Leary and Seán O’Donoghue, withdrawn in the 47th and 52nd minutes, were so outclassed as to cast doubt over their inter-county futures. This year they held their direct opponents to a combined one point from play. Can that improvement continue away from the home ground comfort zone?
They won’t be alone in seeking redemption. Darragh Fitzgibbon has enjoyed his most productive championship season. In Cork he seemed utterly unplayable, bursting from midfield for five points from play. He was also taken off in 2021 after being entirely subdued. Limerick will hope to do a similar job this time and have, in Cathal O’Neill, the summer’s other outstanding midfielder.
Limerick players have scores to settle too. Cork’s shock win in May owed much to Séamus Harnedy and Shane Barrett running Diarmaid Byrnes and Declan Hannon ragged. Time seemed to be telling on Limerick’s half-back line old reliables.
But Hannon’s Munster final display against Clare was one of the finest of his career. Byrnes has steadied the ship too and both are at home in Croke Park to an extent that their Cork opponents aren’t. The explosive Barrett has the advantage of being eight years younger than Hannon. But the 63 championship games Hannon has played to his opponent’s 18 constitute another kind of advantage.
Two attacking performances could be crucial. Aaron Gillane’s run of just one point from play in his last three games isn’t what you’d expect from the reigning Hurler of the Year. Yet the semi-final has been a happy hunting ground for the Patrickswell man, 2-1 from play last year, 0-6 from play in 2018 and 2022. He’ll hardly stay quiet all summer.
Alan Connolly’s hat-trick against Tipperary seemed like the launch party for a major new star. But the 22-year-old has been held scoreless in two subsequent games.
The Rebels top the championship goal-scoring charts with 15 and Connolly, who also hit two hat-tricks in the league, is their outstanding opportunist. His recent struggles are a worry because Cork will need goals to beat Limerick.
It’s hard to see the outsiders’ half-back line holding Gearóid Hegarty and Tom Morrissey. The plethora of other attacking options — Cian Lynch, David Reidy, Shane O’Brien, Séamus Flanagan and Kyle Hayes trotting upfield — mean Limerick will probably hit the 30-point mark. Cork needed 37 to beat them before and may again. They won’t do that without green flags.
Limerick have turned the hurling world upside down in the last six years. Who’d have thought they’d become the imperious aristocrats and Cork the hungry revolutionaries? That Limerick would have history on their side while Cork must trust to hope? That neutrals might side with a county which once needed no-one’s sympathy and against one which was the sentimental favourite when the teams last met in a semi-final?
It’s been a strange championship season. As the football competition limped on amid public indifference and Leinster hurling wallowed in mediocrity, Munster saved the day.
Clare and Limerick played their part too, but Cork above all supplied hurling with a sense of occasion and excitement. They’ve kept it in the headlines during the summer of Taylor Swift, Ronaldo’s tears and rugby’s Croke Park full house.
After the great lost summer of the hidden championships, the GAA is back on centre stage today. Our friends in the south have ridden to the rescue. Be grateful. Be very grateful. This would have been a much smaller season without Cork.
Odd couple come face to face in most fascinating game of the year
Jim McGuinness and Pádraic Joyce are the odd couple of the football championship. McGuinness is fiercely driven, an intellectual figure who’s never slow, whether as manager or pundit, to propound his theories on the game. Joyce is much more guarded. The terseness and rarity of his public pronouncements have led to him being under-rated. McGuinness has a definite saviour aura about him. You wouldn’t be surprised to see him turning water into wine at a club dinner dance. Joyce is a problem solver rather than a miracle worker, more interested perhaps in the practical than the psychological side of the game. The shot of him avoiding the limelight in Pat Comer’s great A Year ’til Sunday documentary speaks volumes. But the duo have certain things in common. Friendship, the Sigerson Cup they won together with Tralee IT in 1998 and the fact that theirs are the two outstanding managerial achievements in the football championship. McGuinness’s steering of an unfancied Donegal team to an Ulster title and an All-Ireland semi-final shows his genius for the game remains intact. Joyce’s masterminding of a win over Dublin by a team cruelly hampered by injuries all season is no less impressive. Next Sunday it’s Quiet Man versus the Donegal Messiah time. The clash could produce the most fascinating game of the season.
French footballers unite in rejection of right wingers
You’d need a heart of stone not to be moved by Ibrahima Konate’s words at the Euro Championships. “My mother and father had jobs as cleaning ladies and binmen with impossible hours,” said the Liverpool defender, “and when I see that we don’t highlight these kinds of people who have given their health for France it saddens me. Life is short, it’s beautiful and we have to enjoy it and be together and not be divisive.” His statement came after the notoriously anti-immigrant Rassemblement National (RN) party led following the first round of French elections. Its leader Jordan Bardella, whose father is Italian, vowed to exclude dual nationals from some state jobs. When Kylian Mbappe urged people not to vote for “extremes”, Bardella attacked him. Mbappe didn’t even name the RN. He didn’t need to. In today’s second round, Bardella bids to become France’s first far right prime minister since the Nazi occupation. It must be an unsettling time for a football team which is the most famous expression of multi-cultural France. Konate’s parents are from Mali, as are N’golo Kante’s. Aurelien Tchouameni’s are from Cameroon, Eduardo Camavinga’s from Angola, Randal Kolo Muani’s from DR Congo, Jules Kounde’s from Benin. No wonder Kounde and Marcus Thuram have called for people to vote against the RN.
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This is more like the 2018 win for us for cork. It’s one they weren’t expecting.
They can be fairly obviously a much better team again next year. They’ve the underage teams coming through as well.
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Absolutely no guarantee of that
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Thanks boy,buzzing ATM
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Lynch was outstanding yesterday.
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Limerick will improve if they get rid of their passengers too. What odds was Byrnes for MOTM again?
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He’s been playing well all year, had a dreadful first half yesterday but scored some vital scores in second half, was unlucky with that ‘sitter’ which Quaid saved very well, he reacted quickly
Anyway, lookit, you have your agenda and I respect that
RE: the Cork subs yesterday, Kingston gave up two possessions whereas Twomey did well on a couple of balls (regardless of that ref call) and ROF won the puck-out for the Horgan goal chance. Twomey/ROF should be first on in future.
They won’t really. You don’t replace lads who won 6 all Irelands easy.
Horgan spent the last three games topping up his own score tally.
A terrible sign of a player.
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Twomey was very harshly called for a throw ball.
Kingston wasn’t much good when he came either time yesterday.
Surprised o Flynn was left off for so long.
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He hit it right at the goalie instead of picking it up and rounding him. His two scores from play were put on a platter for him.
Power will be starting ahead of him next year with Dalton on frees.
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The miss before half time was terrible.
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Horgan tapped over a few handy points that any player worth their salt would score after being passed out to him but I think his inability to win a 50/50 ball and to put himself around physically means he was a passenger of sorts yesterday.
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You sure?
If he’s not scoring he’s frees you might as well start with 14.
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That Barrett effort that hit the post for the Horgan goal chance would have been some score if it went over. The presence of mind not to rush it, buy a yard and sort his feet out to get the shot off was class.
Mark Rodgers had a lovely bit of footwork too for the levelling score late on against Kilkenny. Took a hand pass heading to the sideline away from goal but got his feet right in a flash and sailed her over.
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What match were you watching?
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I think he isn’t over effective but he was never that kind of 70 minute dominant player. He is all about reading breaks and being opportunistic. I think it is a decent balance with Connolly and Hayes.
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