All-Ireland SHC Final: Tipperary 3-27 Cork 1-18
There had been much emphasis on how much Cork would benefit from hard-earned lessons in previous All-Ireland finals and by half-time, all that adversity looked like it had been well invested. A Shane Barrett goal in injury-time put them six points ahead going in for the break.
To most present, that was enough to suggest that the match, if not over, was on a course that would be hard to alter.
Beware easy consensus. Former Tipperary player John O’Dwyer was doing a spot of punditry at half-time and breezily asserted that he could see his county getting a couple of goals and winning. Bravado, surely?
In a tumultuous second half, Bubbles was proved a prophet and Cork’s fervent hopes of ending 20 years of drawing blanks and taking Liam MacCarthy home to Leeside.
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What actually happened defied explanation, let alone foresight. Tipperary simply took the match away from their opponents and refused to yield control for the rest of the final.
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The inspirational Ronan Maher, who quelled Cork’s leading Hurler of the Year contender Brian Hayes and moved himself to the top of the betting, ended up lifting the Liam MacCarthy Cup, and in a moving speech referencing their late team-mate Dillon Quirke.
There were so many heroes on the Tipp team in an outstanding collective display.
Nineteen-year-old Darragh McCarthy has had a baptism of fire this year. Brought in at the start of the league, he was entrusted with free-taking duties and broke off to play in the All-Ireland winning under-20 team as a warm-up for senior championship.
Two high-profile red cards had raised question marks over his temperament, or at least his tackle technique after loose striking saw him sent off for the last 10 minutes of the semi-final against Kilkenny.
This weekend he answered any doubts about his readiness for the top level of the game. Fifteen attempts at scores yielded 1-13 – just one wide from play in the second half spoiled a pristine return – and his impeccable free-taking, nine from nine, marked a monumental display in a first senior All-Ireland final.
It included ice-cold composure for a penalty strike after John McGrath was taken down in the 55th minute.
For the second All-Ireland decider running, Cork were outscored three goals to one and undone by that concession. In the second half they were outscored 3-14 to 0-2.
Tipps full forwards weren’t as celebrated in the raising of green flags as their opponents coming into the final but they had shown plenty of lethal intent along the way.
Four goals saw off Kilkenny in the semi-final, which mightn’t have equalled Cork’s seven against Dublin but each of them had to be chiselled out of a tough surface and helped to turn around the match. Ditto, the four they dug out in Ennis during a vital Munster set-to with their All-Ireland predecessors Clare.
This hadn’t looked altogether likely in the first half, although in a portent of what was to come Jason Forde got a touch to a long-distance free from Eoghan Connolly to send it to the net, but referee Liam Gordon disallowed the goal for a square-ball infraction.
Otherwise, the Cork full backs were well in command. They were playing with the advantage of a big wind, which complicated scoring into the northern end. Tipperary had nine wides during the first half and although shot selection and execution were questionable in some cases, the second half cast it in a new light – as had been the case with the Donegal footballers a week previously.
The leakage of scoring chances was frustrating for Liam Cahill’s team because tactically and individually they had done a fine job in restricting Cork’s feared full forwards.
Willie Connors dropped to wing back, where he had a superb match at the heart of nearly everything disruptive, liberating Bryan O’Mara as the plus-one defender, which he executed to perfection. Unlike the Páirc Uí Chaoimh matches when Cork scored seven goals in the league final and Munster round robin, there was no easy space to be exploited.
Sam O’Farrell came to centrefield with Darragh McCarthy floating out from the full forward line. Ironically, they might well have run the same playbook in May but for the latter’s red card before the match started.
Cork manager Pat Ryan pointed out that even if his full forwards were on tighter rations, the half forwards were able to take advantage. Diarmuid Healy and Barrett helped themselves to 1-6 and there were six points in it at half-time, 1-16 to 0-13. Lively scores, picked off to keep their opponents under pressure.
Declan Dalton threw in another of his huge frees. After a sequence of feisty Tipp defence in the 21st minute, Patrick Horgan was on hand to loft over the squirming ball for a three-point lead.
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A mark of the current Tipp team, as rebuilt by Cahill, is a refusal to throw in their cards. They kept the scores down and swallowed the frustration of missing so many of their own chances.
Maybe the first sign of Cork’s unease came when Horgan hit a straightforward free wide just after half-time. The referral to Hawk-Eye only prolonged the awkwardness.
This was followed by a rallying point from Conor Stakelum, who had provided three similar scores when the semi-final had not been going well. But this was more than token defiance. It started a run on the scoreboard that Cork could not arrest.
An unanswered 1-5 convulsed the match. Andrew Ormond, quiet in the first half, popped up with two in rapid succession.
The real instrument of destruction though was John McGrath, whose return to form this year was such a feature of Tipperary’s All-Ireland run. Capitalising on a Jake Morris shot that Patrick Collins spilled, he calmly set about regathering the ball amongst defenders and making the room for a shot to the net.
Subdued in the first half, he was now rampant and taken down for the critical event of the match, a penalty that saw McGrath’s marker Eoin Downey sent off on a second yellow card in the 53rd minute. McCarthy slammed it to Collins’s left.
Six minutes later McGrath had his seventh goal of the championship, a steely, eyes-on-the-prize jump for another booming Eoghan Connolly delivery and a touch to the net, uninhibited by what might happen at the hands of converging defenders.
A fitting grace note for a match that had long been decided.
TIPPERARY: R Shelly (0-1); R Doyle (0-1), E Connolly (0-1), M Breen; C Morgan, R Maher (capt), B O’Mara; W Connors (0-1), C Stakelum (0-1); J Morris (0-2), A Ormond (0-2), S O’Farrell; D McCarthy (1-13, 1-0 pen, 8f, 1’65), J McGrath (2-2), J Forde (0-2).
Subs: S Kennedy for O’Mara (50 mins), A Tynan for Morgan (56), N McGrath (0-1) for O’Farrell (60), D Stakelum for C Stakelum, O O’Donoghue for Ormond (both 66).
CORK: P Collins; N O’Leary (0-1), E Downey, S O’Donoghue; C Joyce, R Downey (capt), M Coleman; T O’Mahony, D Fitzgibbon (0-2); D Healy (0-3), S Barrett (1-4), D Dalton (0-1f); P Horgan (0-4, 3f), A Connolly (0-1), B Hayes (0-1).
Subs: S Harnedy (0-1) for Dalton (44 mins), D Cahalane for Healy (56), C Lehane for Horgan (58), S Kingston for Connolly (65), T O’Connell for O’ Mahony (67).
Referee: L Gordon (Galway).
