Cork camogie’s new generation shows winning habits die hard

Cork 1-13 Galway 0-9

It was over before it finished, the conclusion obvious well ahead of the end. Cork carved a 26th notch onto the bedpost without ever really having to sharpen their knives.

If the outcome was in any doubt, it was only because they took their time about going for the kill and left themselves needlessly vulnerable to something freakish taking them down. It didn’t happen – but if it had, they’d only have had themselves to blame.

The key score came 17 minutes from the end, when Briege Corkery scuttled through on goal down by Hill 16 and finished the contest with a shot that beat Galway goalkeeper Susan Earner low to her right. But in a game where Cork had dominated for long spells, it was a goal that felt more worthy of a phew of relief than a roar of joy. It put them five ahead for the first time on an afternoon where they had long since been at least that much the better team.

Paudie Murray has set his Cork side up not to concede and that is how they won another All-Ireland. For the fourth game out of seven, they didn’t let in a goal. Galway scored nine points, all but two from placed balls. By packing the Cork defence and keeping Galway as far from his goal as possible, Murray plonked his opposition into a maze from which they were going to have to be very skilled or very lucky to escape.

Though it achieved its aim, there were times in this often curiously flat All-Ireland final that you wondered was it really necessary. Cork were the more skilled side here and generally the fitter one as well. They had more scorers, more leaders and more experience in the bank. They came in here on the back of 6-27 scored in the quarter-final and semi-final against Tipp and Kilkenny – if they’d just come out and hurled Galway, you got the sense that they’d have wrapped this up by half-time.

Even though they owned the first half, they played it as though they were scrimping and saving just to make the mortgage on it. Only two Galway players made any impression at all: the surging runs of Niamh Kilkenny and the glorious striking of Niamh McGrath all they had to offer. But apart from one early whipped point from McGrath, everything Galway tried crashed against the rocks of the Cork half-back line. The steel curtain Cork drew across their own 45 was impenetrable.

Terrific points

The flipside was that Cork never had enough players in attack to threaten the goal that would have put clear water between the sides.

They landed some terrific points from distance through that first half – Orla Cotter, Aisling Thompson and Orla Cronin all threw into the pot, as did Corkery – but though they had plenty of possession, they often ran out of bodies before they could get close to goal and so had to content themselves with points.

It all washed out into a 0-8 to 0-4 half-time lead. With Gemma O’Connor, Julia White and Thompson all putting in afternoons of absolute athletic certainty around the middle, it was hard to see where Galway were going to get any traction. The only route to goal for them seemed to be McGrath’s frees.

Still, the problem with a four-point lead is that it doesn’t take a huge amount of whittling, even against a team with only one whittler. For 10 minutes after the break, the Cork tackling that was winning the ball in the first half started to draw referee Ray Kelly’s ire. McGrath stepped into three of them and cleared the bar each time, the third one from 62 metres. All of a sudden, Cork 0-8 Galway 0-7.

“I was disappointed with the frees, to be honest,” said Murray. “We spoke about that at half-time: we gave away a couple of frees, and a couple were very harsh, to be honest. One point from play from Galway in the first half – we were saying don’t give away frees and we’ll win the game. I was disappointed with that part of it.”

Defensive

Now all Galway needed was a break. When one high ball rained down on the edge of the champions’ square to cause hassle for Aoife Murray between the sticks, the fragility of the Cork lead was obvious. Had a sniping Galway forward been on hand, it could have been a different game.

“I thought for ten minutes in the second half we had them on the rails but our time didn’t last long enough,” said Galway manager Tony Ward.

“When the goal came it put paid to our chances really. We weren’t getting a spread of scores. Cork were very defensive and closed us out all day long. Look, it just wasn’t our day, we didn’t open it up like we have been doing all year and that can happen.”

As it was, a one-point margin was as close as it got. Cork saw out the last 15 minutes by outscoring Galway 1-5 to 0-2. Corkery’s goal was the killshot but Thompson, Cotter or Amy O’Connor all had their say as well. Champions, no ifs or buts about it.

“We’ve been coming all year,” said Murray. “We knew where we were going, and I’d have been disappointed if we didn’t win today. We’d been performing very well in training, we were very focused, and this is a very strong team mentally.”

CORK:

A Murray; P Mackey, L Treacy, L O’Sullivan; R Buckley, G O’Connor, M Cahalane; O Cotter (0-7, five frees), A Thompson (0-2); J White, O Cronin (0-1), K Mackey (0-1); H Looney, B Corkery (1-1), A O’Connor (0-1). Subs: E O’Sullivan for Looney (35 mins), M Walsh for O’Sullivan (60+2 mins).

GALWAY:

S Earner T Manton, S Dervan, H Cooney; S Coen, S Healy, L Ryan; N Kilkenny, C McGrath; A Donohue (0-1), N McGrath (0-8, seven frees), F Keeley; C Finnerty, M Dunne, A O’Reilly. Subs: J Gill for Finnerty (half-timet), S Cahalan for Healy (58 mins), R Hennelly for C McGrath (60+1 mins).

Referee: R Kelly (Kildare).