All Ireland Hurling Final 2024 - The Tony Kelly Final

That Loughnane/Lohan embtace is one of my all time favourite GAA photos.

Was that today? @Fat_Pox

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Goodnight

https://twitter.com/liammurphynof/status/1815095616655274451?s=46&t=YOfhVM10W0bcyIiYSLI3Wg

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Quilligan
Leen-Lohan-Hogan
Davy Mc-Conlon-Galvin
Morey-Taylor
Fitz-Kelly-McCarthy
Galvin-Shan-Meehan

If you told the most optimistic Clare supporter 16 months ago that would be the team on the pitch to close out an all Ireland final they probably would have given you a wry smile or dismissed you.

Testament to player development and a willingness to trust your panel - would have been very easy to throw back in a Duggan/Rodgers/Reidy after full time instead he trusted his panel and they delivers for him. That 3 or 4 minute spell in the second period of extra time where we hit 3 points was simply superb, Kelly’s super point to Conlon’s flick into David Mcs hand for Meehan’s score - we weren’t to be beaten!

A fantastic occasion - cork with 8 shots and 1-7 in the board in the first 10 minutes but it wasn’t sustainable. The Clare half backline roared into it and drove on. Diarmuid Ryan had a spell in the second half where he must have won 5 or 6 hard balls on the trot, if it had ended in 70 he surely would hand been MOTM. His two colleagues fought on their backs all day and won their battles too!

TK out on his feet yet he pulled us through the flat spots in extra time before the more inexperienced found their feet, suddenly Lohan was webbing on ball, Cian Galvin was spraying passes and Meehan firing over points.

A fantastic performance after a slow opening 10. 3-29, 3-24 from play by my count, I don’t think we got a scorable free in the second half. One or two aside there were fantastic performances all over the field with lads standing up at different points.

The Banners flying night tonight in Clare my heart my home!!!

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Tipp v Kilkenny 2010 was superior to Kilkenny v Tipp 2009.

All three Clare v Cork finals were superior to either.

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TK’s point from the Hogan Stand side where he flicked it away and then scooped it over Carkie’s head was one for the ages.

I don’t think I’ve seen a better point in a final. Incredible stuff.

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An absolutely beautiful point. But should he have been able to get it. Should the cork lad have levelled him or tryed to level him.
Maybe he he wouldnt have got near him anyway. Kelly moves with such balance and speed he just glides past him.
When listening to Kelly talk about his goal, it just come natural to him. He was going for a point but as the defender came across he had to improvise and he was able to do it so quickly, and execute it. What a player.

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Thank U,I went into a cave after it until now

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Ye will come again. Went down giving everything yesterday. A terrible one to lose in the circumstances and on razor fine margins. But the players did ye proud.

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100 pc,thanks

Very good summation in fairness.

Don’t like to single the lad out but Collins was an issue yesterday now looking back at the game again.

Felt his puck outs were ordinary and he seemed panicked throughout.

Cork are very close now and perhaps Pa improves for the experience but there just might be better in Cork in the position.

Maybe the Cork posters disagree?

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No maybe about it I’d say :sweat_smile:

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Eamon Sweeney in the Indo is absolutely seething with Johnny Murphy. It’s worth the subscription to get a feel for his anger.

As if Johnny saw the jersey pull and decided not to give it. The Cork players should have gone apeshit and got the lino and umpire involved.

WTF was Leen thinking. It was a nothing pull but a stonewall free.

ROF dived earlier though. Karma maybe.

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Fire up the Sweeney article there if you can.

I would but I don’t know how to :weary:

Eamonn Sweeney: Referee takes centre stage as Cork robbed of replay after thrilling All-Ireland SHC final duel

Talking point

Cork’s Patrick Horgan appeals to referee Johnny Murphy during theAll-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship final to rule in his teams favour. Photo by Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

Clare’s Conor Leen has a firm hold of Robbie O’Flynn’s jersey as the Cork sub takes his last-gasp shot which sailed wide. Photo: Daire Brennan/Sportsfile

Cork’s Patrick Horgan appeals to referee Johnny Murphy during theAll-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship final to rule in his teams favour. Photo by Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

Clare’s Conor Leen has a firm hold of Robbie O’Flynn’s jersey as the Cork sub takes his last-gasp shot which sailed wide. Photo: Daire Brennan/Sportsfile

Eamonn Sweeney

Today at 02:30

Cork were robbed of an All-Ireland final replay by the worst end-of-game refereeing decision since Joe Sheridan’s goal against Louth was allowed in the 2010 Leinster football final.

Conor Leen clearly pulled Robbie O’Flynn’s jersey in the last seconds of extra-time as the Cork sub shot for a levelling point. But Limerick referee Johnny Murphy decided not to award a free. One of the greatest seasons in hurling history ended on the sour note of a wrong decision.

That’s not to take away from the victory of a marvellous Clare team who were marginally the better side over 90 minutes. They deserved their victory on the balance of play.

Yet if Murphy had made the right call, Cork would have been awarded a close-range free, Pat Horgan would have tapped it over and we’d now be contemplating a replay.

Given how exciting the final was, it’s not just Cork but the Irish sporting public who’ve been robbed by the misapplication of Murphy’s Law.

That late mistake wasn’t the official’s only controversial moment. When O’Flynn was pulled down as he closed in on goal three minutes from the end of normal time, it seemed a cast-iron case for a penalty and a black card.

It was a big call at that stage of the game and Murphy’s decision to consult with his umpires suggested his awareness of the fact.

But the call seemed at least as clearcut as the one SeĂĄn Stack made when Kyle Hayes pulled down Shane Kingston in the Munster championship at PĂĄirc UĂ­ Chaoimh. Murphy opted instead to award a free and eschew any further sanction.

You can argue that this worked out OK as Cork managed to equalise even without the penalty. Though the effect on such a close game of Clare being a man down in the closing stages may not have been entirely negligible.

No one likes to dwell on bad decisions in the biggest games of the season. Referees have a hard enough job, why make it harder? Maybe scrutiny will encourage keyboard warriors to shower them with abuse.

But such considerations don’t mean we should pretend refs got things right when they got them wrong. Especially when the mistake is this consequential.

Is it any worse for Murphy to be remembered as the man who missed the crucial free than for O’Flynn to be remembered as the man who missed the crucial point?

Players get their share of online stick too. We don’t pretend a player who put the ball wide put it over the bar just to spare his blushes.

Everyone likes to think the All-Ireland final draws a line under the season and the champions unquestionably deserve their triumph. Hence the tendency to gloss over mistakes like this, to strike a pose of noble magnanimousness and suggest the losers had only themselves to blame.

You can say Cork shouldn’t have been in this position, that the loss is their own fault for losing a seven-point lead and the majority of 50-50 contests. If O’Flynn himself hadn’t shot too close to Eibhear Qulligan a few minutes earlier, that late call mightn’t even have mattered.

This is missing the point. The late call did matter, the result rested on it and all the mistakes Cork made put together didn’t entitle Leen to escape punishment for pulling O’Flynn’s jersey.

They might ref by karma in the Tibetan hurling championship, but it hasn’t really caught on elsewhere.

Given the chaos caused by VAR in the Premier League, no one fancies the introduction of such a system here. But there’s something terribly unsatisfactory about a classic final being decided by a refereeing error.

You didn’t need to draw any computer lines to see the foul. Correcting the call from upstairs would have taken a couple of seconds.

The argument that such an inspection would be anathema to the world’s fastest field sport doesn’t hold water. On several occasions the play was held up for Hawkeye to make decisions without any great damage being done to the flow of the game.

If it’s worth holding things up for debatable scores, surely there should be a mechanism to overturn a mistake of yesterday’s magnitude.

It’d do referees a favour. Hurling has become so fast even the best ref won’t get every call right. Up to those two late decisions, Murphy was having a superb game, his decision-making contributing greatly to this most wonderful of finals. He’s a good referee.

​GAA refereeing is by and large a marvel. Compare the multiple aberrations of a Premier League season with the lack of howlers in our faster and more complex games. Everyone makes mistakes. Having those mistakes set right as quickly as possible is a favour rather than an imposition.

Perhaps the biggest mistake, the one which really denied the sporting public a classic replay, was made not in a split-second by a referee but as a matter of policy by the GAA hierarchy.

It was the absurdly truncated nature of the season which forced the teams into extra-time yesterday. Why? This was the last game of the championship, so the precious schedule was hardly going to be upset by a replay.

What’s the worst that would have happened? Cork and Clare might have had to start a club round-robin a week late? I suspect the grassroots in both counties might just about have tolerated this appalling scenario.

The refusal to countenance a replay has ended up costing the GAA several million. That’s something worth remembering when Munster hurling fans are told next year that they’re paying for GAAGO because the GAA needs the money.

In a year of Croke Park mistakes, maybe the final ended on a fitting note after all.

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Oooft!! Seething!

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Dry your eyes Eamonn

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Hammering the keyboard

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Clare carried such a torch a year ago after the Munster final.
Swings and roundabouts

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Cork crowd are complete sour grapes. The ref was good in fairness. Theyll never get everything right. Considering throughout the season cork got a lot of calls in their favour.

Clare were the better team yesterday and should jave won in the 70 mins

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