Munster SFC quarter-final: Cork 4-16 (4-0-16) Limerick 1-16 (1-2-11)
After the final whistle the Limerick players gathered in a circle in the middle of Páirc Uí Chaoimh, their debrief battered by another shower of hailstones. Once upon a time the provincial championships heralded the beginning of the Irish summer, but that relationship has irretrievably broken down. In football now, all of the heat comes later.
On the face of it, there was nothing to see here: a team promoted to Division 1 of the league for next season beat a team that has just been relegated to Division 4. But there were wrinkles that nobody could have expected.
Having played into the teeth of a perishing wind in the first half, Cork led by five goals at half-time, and then sleep-walked through the rest of the game. They didn’t muster a shot at goal for the opening 12 minutes of the second half, and in the end, they added just six wind-assisted points to their total. For a team with aspirations to break back into the game’s elite, it was slack-minded and careless.
The second half, though, will have nourished Limerick’s morale. Their injury list is so crippling that only six players who started last year’s Tailteann Cup final lined up here, but they played with urgency and bite in the second half and deflected what could have been a massacre.
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Cork’s concentration dropped dramatically, which was also a feature of their league wins against Offaly and Kildare. In those games they held commanding leads at half-time too only for the game to slip from their control.
“Happy with the first half, happy with the result, not happy with the second half. Simple as that,” said John Cleary, the Cork manager. “Attitude in the first half was spot on. We were running hard, we were getting our hands on ball, we were clinical. Second half, couldn’t get our hands on ball. We were down to 14 for 20 minutes [sic] of it, which maybe didn’t help the situation either. Lots to work on.
“The only thing about it, this has happened us a couple of times - we’ve addressed it and the following day they’ve been better. That’s what we’ll hope now for Saturday week.”
In fact, Cork were down to 14 men for 27 minutes of the second half. Brian O’Driscoll – who was instrumental in two of Cork’s first half goals – was black carded two minutes into the second half in a clear case of mistaken identity. The Cork goalkeeper Micheál Aodh Martin brought down Robbie Childs inside the large parallelogram, but after consulting with his umpires, the referee Séamus Mulhare punished O’Driscoll.
The knock-on effect was that a yellow card for O’Driscoll with 17 minutes remaining triggered a red.
With a man down, Limerick made Cork suffer. The excellent James Naughton converted the penalty for the foul on Childs and they out-scored Cork 1-3 to 0-0 in the first 15 minutes of the second half.
Kickouts were a problem for Cork at various stages during the league, including in the final, but having had a 70 per cent retention rate against the wind in the first half, they lost four of their first five kick-outs after the break. That offered Limerick a foothold in the game and Cork struggled to change the momentum.
It was all so different in the first half. Goals from the outstanding Dara Sheedy and Tommy Walsh in the space of 60 seconds gave Cork a 2-2 to 0-3 lead after 15 minutes and the home team ripped through the Limerick defence at will.
O’Driscoll, who has been rejuvenated as a wing-back this season, was heavily involved in Cork’s next two goals - one of them finished by Chris Óg Jones and the other by Ian Maguire.
With the wind at their backs, Limerick stacked their chips on scoring two-pointers, but from six attempts in the first half they landed just two. Jack McCarthy had a goal chance smothered by Colm O’Callaghan, and in the second half, when they had Cork on the run, they squandered two more goal chances: Killian Ryan hit the post and Childs had a shot that flashed just wide. They needed all of them.
Having trailed by 15 points at the break, 4-10 to 0-7, Limerick brought the deficit down to eight a couple of times in the second half, but that was as close as they got. Cork came to life again in the last 10 minutes and Conor Corbett was impressive off the bench.
Anyway, the heat will come soon.
CORK: M A Martin, M Shanley, D O’Mahony, S Meehan, B O’Driscoll, T Walsh (1-0-0), L Fahy (0-0-1), C O’Callaghan, I Maguire (1-0-0), P Walsh (0-0-2, M Cronin (0-0-3), S McDonnell (1-0-0), C Óg Jones (0-0-2), D Sheedy (1-0-0), S Sherlock (0-0-4, 1f, 1′45). Subs: C Cahalane (0-0-3) for Sheedy (h-t), C Corbett for McDonnell, B Hurley (0-0-1) for Cronin (both 54 mins) D Buckley for Jones, D Cashman for Fahy (both 67).
LIMERICK: J Alfred, S Kilbridge, C Woulfe, D Buckley, B Coleman (0-1-0), K Ryan (0-0-1), T McCarthy, E Riordan (0-0-5, 1free, 4′45s), J McCarthy, R O’Brien (0-0-1), C Fahy (0-0-1), P Maher, R Childs, J Naughton (1-1-2, 1-0 pen, 1f) D Neville. Subs: C McSweeney for J McCarthy, P Nash (0-0-1) for P Maher (both h-t), S Cross for O’Brien (55 mins) M McCarthy (0-0-1) for T McCarthy (61).
Referee: S Mulhare (Laois).
