Sport is usually a lot more resistant to redemption songs than this. The club finals take, the clubs finals don’t normally give. Not like this, anyway. In front of 22,890 in Croke Park, Kilmacud Crokes and Ballyhale Shamrocks both found a way to right the wrongs of last February.
It’s hard to compute which turn of events was less likely – that they would both lose the 2022 club All-Ireland to a last-minute goal or that they would both find their way back to carry off the 2023 version. Yet here they both were, back up Everest to collect what they’d left behind.
Ballyhale did it in comfier fashion than Kilmacud – they had seven points to spare over Dunloy in the hurling final. But the Dublin champions came through the football final against Glen in the most dramatic way possible, needing a stunning injury-time save from goalkeeper Conor Ferris to avoid a repeat of their fate from last year.
“I told the lads at the team meeting on Thursday that Conor would win us the All-Ireland,” said Kilmacud manager Robbie Brennan afterwards. “I said it at half-time again, Conor would win us the All-Ireland. I knew because Glen would go after goals probably in order to beat us. I was aware of his ability, that he’s a brilliant shot-stopper would come into play.”
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This doesn’t normally happen, of course. What goes around doesn’t always make a habit of coming around – and almost never in the club championships. Since these competitions began in 1970, there had only been one instance of a club clawing their way out of the hole of losing an All-Ireland final to square the ledger the following year. Nemo Rangers stood alone before this, carrying off the football title in 2003. They have company now.
Of the pair, you’d have made Ballyhale marginally the more likely to find a way to do it. They’re the first five-in-a-row champions in Kilkenny, the first four-in-a-row winners in Leinster, miles off in the distance at the head of the All-Ireland roll of honour on nine titles. They know the road, they just hit the wrong speed bump at the wrong time against Ballygunner last year.
Dunloy gave them plenty of it and were only a point down entering the final eight minutes. But with man-of-the-match Eoin Cody rattling off a brilliant 1-5, the Kilkenny champions took no chances down the home straight. They tidied away a 1-22 to 1-15 victory and scrubbed off the stain of what happened last year.
“You don’t tip-toe around it,” said Ballyhale manager Pat Hoban. “There’s over 170 senior clubs in the country. Every club starts out at the start of the year to win their county, their province, and the dream for every club is to get to an All-Ireland final. You have to take it in steps.
“I was here in February as a supporter and as a Kilkenny man. Anybody could feel, to lose a game like that is very harsh. These guys, it’s like anything in sport – you move on, the next game. But it was the nag there. It was something that they felt – we gotta get back, we’re good enough to be All-Ireland champions.”
For Kilmacud, nothing about the past 12 months has been simple. They were able to press Paul Mannion back into action here, four months after losing him to an ankle injury. But as it turned out neither he nor Shane Walsh scored from play during Crokes 1-11 to 1-9 defeat of Derry champions Glen. Instead it was lesser lights like Dara Mullin, Cian O’Connor and, at the death, Ferris who saw them through.
The victory was coloured by the fact that Crokes had 16 players on the pitch late on, while Glen were taking a 45 and Crokes had sent on a substitute without taking Mullin off. “We have been made aware that potentially a rule was broken,” said Glen chairman Barry Slowey. “And the club will be seeking clarification from the GAA on it.”
The 45 resulted from Ferris’s save from Conor Glass in the 63rd minute, which was basically the whole day in microcosm. It was Ferris’s mistake in extra-time injury-time last year that led to the Kilcoo goal that sunk Crokes. For him to be the hero here is the kind of thing that tests the patience of script editors.
“Last year was one of the toughest days I’ve ever had,” Ferris said. “I said to Batch [Robbie Brennan] once, I think it was a couple of months later, ‘Where is my silver medal? I want to keep that and put it on the mantelpiece so I see it every day and have the motivation to come back and go one further than last year.’
“If you were talking to anyone, they’ll say the last five minutes of last year was in our minds coming up to the end. Two points up, it’s a dangerous lead. I’m still coming back down to earth.”
