Rebels fashion another great escape

GAELIC GAMES/Cork 2-19 Clare 2-17:ANOTHER MONDAY morning. The heartbeat settles back to medically prescribed levels, the slight whiplash from being on a rollercoaster watching end-to-end genius subsides and the real world hoves slowly back into view. Watching the Cork hurlers should come with a Government Health Warning.

The faithful gathered once again under the Old Stand in Semple Stadium yesterday and a soft swaying sea of red and white issued the gentle lullaby of The Banks. This Cork team have stirred so many passions in Cork over the years and if this is to be their last epic adventure they go with the slate wiped clean, nothing to be forgiven, much to be thanked for.

This was the stuff of high -summer, the fodder of myth, Hemingway's bullring, Setanta's hound, di Maggio's streak. Cork, who we watched gape-mouthed just a short while ago as they rolled back the rock against Galway, stood on the turf in Thurles eight points down to Clare and surely bereft of hope. It didn't seem worth watching, so hard was it to see from which gossamer threads the Rebels would construct an escape ladder this week.

Diarmuid O'Sullivan, the "Rock" in the good times was frighteningly porous, elsewhere things were worryingly flat. The forwards looked weary of miracle-working and even the famed half -back line looked shorn of its superpowers. If it had been an episode of Batman, Gotham would have been howling for its heroes, criticising their tardiness.

And Clare were revelling in it. Rampant. Hungry, and faster for every breaking ball. More muscular in their intent. Prodigal with their wides but enjoying enough possession not to have regrets about them. They had even scored a nice goal. A deft flick from Barry Nugent switching Gerry Quinn's long free past Donal Óg.

Nothing in hurling tastes as sweet as putting one of the "Big Three" away and Clare were on a sugar-high. Cork were being nailed into their box and dispatched as a team to the great yonder. We looked at each other at half-time as they trudged off. We had used up our ration of hyperbole on Cork versus Galway. It wouldn't be needed today.

"We knew we were under pressure," said John Gardiner with flat understatement afterwards. "We came in after a tough game last week and we knew today would be difficult. We expected to be flat in the first half. You can't be producing games like last week, week in, week out. Obviously we were disappointed with the lead we gave away and the sort of scores in the first half. Our intensity wasn't great."

So there they were. Flat and slow. On the edge. And yet you know the outcome. Like a weekly episode of your favourite cliffhanger, Cork dug into the heart of themselves and found something more.

They hauled Clare back to within a point early in the second half of the game, a Timmy McCarthy goal working as a tonic while things grew as desperate as a street-fight. And Clare took it and gave back more, pulling away, two points, three, four, five, their lead extended by means of a goal which should have broken Cork's spirit for good.

But Cork came back relentless as the tide. The Rock was hauled in to a sympathetic ovation and Kieran Murphy, his indirect replacement in a series of switches, celebrated his first touch with a goal. If Cork know one thing it is how to finish out. In the last quarter of an hour there were eight points scored and Cork had six of them. The old heroes worked the mojo too, Neil Ronan, in another of his cameos, stealing two, Ben O'Connor taking three.

When they beat Galway last week they danced a carnival. Yesterday Cork looked spent at the end. Their dressingroom silent as another afternoon of conflict with nature and age washed over them.

"We were talking in the dressingroom at half-time," said Gerald McCarthy, "and equated it to last Saturday at the same stage. We hadn't played. Our legs looked heavy and dead. We weren't reacting to breaking ball. We got a couple of quick points but couldn't shake them off. It was a very gutsy performance from Clare. When we came back so strong they pulled away again and pulled away to five points."

And that was it. Cork survive and their reward is to face Kilkenny in a couple of weeks' time. Back full circle to 1999 and the All -Ireland win which turned most of this team from boys to men.

On the other side of the draw, Waterford are still working their passage. Like Cork, they were casualties early in Munster but unlike Cork they took the gamble of making their manager walk the plank mid-season. The change of voice appears to be doing them good. Davy Fitzgerald supervised a famous victory yesterday.

Wexford came at Waterford with everything they had, and that amounts to a lot more than they are ever allowed show in Leinster finals. They hurled hard and freely but the experience which Waterford have accrued in a decade of close shaves and big adventures stood to them. They were four points up and lucky to be so at half -time but survived a late penalty to hang on for a one-point win.

A sad end to Wexford's season but a dignified one. "We hurled with composure for 70 minutes today," said John Meyler, their manager. "But at times we lacked a small bit of concentration distributing the ball out of the backs. Mullane and Dan (Shanahan) came alive today. I was hoping to God he wouldn't but Dan got a goal and a point. The last seven or eight years of playing Cork here in the Munster championship showed today for Waterford."

"Just a great day for Waterford hurling," said Fitzgerald, who brings his team in three weeks to face Tipperary, a foe he always loved to have in his sights as a player. Could this, of all years, be the one when Waterford make the promised land?