GAELIC GAMES: Strange days. Down by the river for a game of two distinct and unrelated halves. The result was sown into the game early on when Cork's excellence made victory inevitable.

The twist was that Tipp, outgunned and short on experience, came out and made an entertainment of it before the final whistle.

Odd. Tipperary were swatted away like wanton boys during the opening passages and you feared for them. In the end though, one side came away with yet another Munster title. The other came away with a lesson learned and heads held high.

Some 43,500 punters came away from the Munster final without complaining. Something for everyone in the audience.

Still, Tipperary will be eager to trace fingers back over it all to find cause of death. There was a whole screed of excitement left to be wrung from the thing at the time but they'll know when it went away from them.

When the dust had settled, the backroom's dry, sombre coroners had little difficulty pinpointing the moment of expiration for Tipp. The jig was up just seconds after the moment of greatest vigour. The Blackrock end stood and cheered the moment.

The Munster final had the guts of an hour left in it but you knew that for Tipp to win it they would be entering the realm of the miraculous.

Imagine it. It came close to being romantic and epic for Tipp after a dreadful start. The huge red bank of Corkness had just begun the first confident rendering of their song de jour, composed specially for the benefit of young Micheál Webster, the shy and retiring Tipp full forward. Sully's Going to Get You! they taunted, Sully's Going to Get You!

And a long, high ball came dropping out of the blue sky and Webster reached a hand cloudward and plucked it from over the head of Diarmuid O'Sullivan. An impossible insult. In The Rock's airspace! Panic ensued. Dust rising! Penalty!

Webster, coming out of his shell slowly, ran to the Blackrock end with his hand cupped against his ear. He could hear nothing but the sounds of the Lee soughing gently beyond.

Eoin Kelly came to the penalty like a surgeon coming to a routine operation. The morale of both teams hung on the outcome. Kelly performed his part with brisk efficiency but Donal Óg Cusack had one of those energised moments of genius and flashed his stick to his right almost by reflex. Save!

Bang. Bang. Straight up the field. Point from Kieran Murphy. Point from Niall McCarthy. And so it was that Tipp ended up going in for their favoured energy drink to contemplate an 11-point deficit. They went 29 minutes without scoring. During that time they conceded 1-10. Hurling's equivalent of being buried under the mineshaft with just a small pocket of air to suck.

"We said that whatever happens we'll leave everything out on the field, we'll come in shattered off the pitch," said Ken Hogan afterwards. "We did that as well as we could. We missed certain chances and chances went a-begging and we'll have serious regrets."

Those regrets will be different in quality from those Cork will experience, but the Rebels, winning their 50th Munster title, will be kept awake at night by the nature of a second half that seemed impossible.

Only Cork know how much their own doziness contributed to the game becoming a match after the break.

The Tipperary half-back line and midfield suddenly got on top. Paul Kelly's workrate was matched by the amount of acreage he was granted to apply it in, and slowly Tipp began clawing their way back.

For a brief period the Diarmuid O'Sullivan versus Micheál Webster sideshow turned into the main event as Tipp lobbed high ball after high ball into the square and the pair contested them as if it were a training exercise. The Rock prevailed but his status as emperor of the air was diminished somewhat by a couple of magnificent fetches by the young Tipp forward.

Afterwards John Allen, the genial Cork manager, would describe the game as "bizarre", and in truth there were few other ways to describe it.

Cork lost a string of more than a dozen of their own puck-outs after the break, as Tipperary just pinned them back territorially. The substitutes who had been introduced with some alacrity at the first smell of smoke put themselves about, most notably John Carroll, Ger O'Grady and John Devane.

Cork's half-forward line evaporated, leaving their inside line isolated and lonely for the second period, and all that kept Cork alive was the odd point, usually from a free, a subject of some chagrin for Tipp afterwards.

Yet it all had a surreal air of inevitability about it after Tipp allowed Cork choreograph their own first-half show.

Late on the ball flashed across the gaping Cork goalmouth and Tommy Dunne pursued it, needing just a flick. He ended up buried under a pile of Diarmuid O'Sullivan. Story of his day.

"Relieved," said John Allen at the finish. "Was it a good Munster final? I don't know. It was a strange one. We played total hurling in the first half. Superb points. Maybe on the other hand we'd be put in the same category as Kilkenny, who gave an awesome display. At least we don't have that tablet around our neck as being awesome or unbeatable."

Strange to hear a winner looking for consolations. It was that sort of day.