Galway maintained their great record against Cork and awakened memories of their previous semi-final ambushes from the moment they burst into this match with a strong opening 10 minutes. Micheál Donoghue has once again set up a new team, combining experience and some really impressive youngsters, and they were exceptional.
[ Report: Galway 2-26 Cork 1-18Opens in new window ]
It’s not a simple system of play, but they implement it enthusiastically. I remember maybe Rory Burke – so unfortunate to be injured – saying after a match earlier in the year how much they were all enjoying themselves. It shows.
Jason Rabbitte showed amazing maturity in his ability to win ball, hold it up and use the possession well. Cork never got on top of him – a deserved Man of the Match. Darragh Neary brought athleticism and work rate to his win as well as finishing his early goal really well.
They increasingly dominated midfield and Tommy O’Connell was replaced before the end of the third quarter.
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Their supporters were also back. They might not always be right when they swing behind the county team but they have seldom been wrong when not turning up. Last year there were around 15,000 in Limerick to see them beaten by Tipperary.
This was a full Croke Park, and although they were outnumbered by Cork’s phenomenal crowd, Galway brought decent support and helped to generate a force field along with the team’s constant movement and relentless energy.
It shows again the credentials of the league. I was impressed by them from the start and especially in the challenge they put up to eventual winners Limerick in the Gaelic grounds.
Winning Leinster may not have been any guarantee of progress, given the poor level of competition, but it was a box Galway needed to tick and meant an awful lot to them. Their ability to raise their game for the final against Dublin, and again for this weekend, is a significant marker.
Cork’s problem, however, was that the shortcomings visible in their Munster final defeat were, if anything, exacerbated in Croke Park. In the provincial decider against Limerick, they didn’t score from play after the 38th minute and got off just 23 shots. This afternoon, they replicated that against a Galway team that doubled their output, shooting 47 times for their 2-26.
Having recovered from Galway’s breakneck start, Cork reeled them in and led by five at one stage. Alan Walsh got a great goal, and Brian Hayes was uncontrollable, reaching half-time with six points.
The big difference was that the Galway players who had been out of sorts – including Daithí Burke, who really struggled on Hayes, and Conor Whelan, who shot a terrible wide just before the break – stuck at it and turned their performances around.
Whelan was a ball of energy, harassing the Cork defence and shot two points, while Burke settled into an improved defence which worked hard and hunted ravenously to repel attack after attack in the second half.
A significant part of Galway’s win was the way in which they reduced the lead to a single point by half-time. It was as if they’d got their second wind. After the break, they buckled into the match, and within a few minutes had retaken the lead, which they never let go.
The defence tightened up considerably and, ominously for Cork, Hayes was wide with his first shot of the second half and generally found himself outnumbered.
Shane Barrett was bottled up and saw his attempt at a last-minute goal well saved by Darach Fahy, and then Darragh Fitzgibbon was sent off on a second yellow card having not been nearly as prominent as he would have wished.
Cork were so broken by the increased tempo that in the 50th minute, Cathal Mannion scored a point from an acre of space with no opponent even in his postcode. A few inaccuracies aside, the Ahascragh-Fohenagh man had a monumental match, getting on ball all over the middle third and directing play.
This must have been agony for Cork, a rerun of their second-half nightmare in last year’s All-Ireland final. But I don’t see it as a mental collapse or meltdown.
Quite simply, when a big match in front a capacity crowd at Croke Park intensifies, are all of the players sufficiently technically proficient to meet the challenge? I’m not sure they are, on the evidence of all we’ve seen in the past two seasons.
Galway are back, and it’s a welcome return because new contenders are always welcome and it indicates that there is some life yet in Leinster hurling.
