Castlehaven (Cork) 1-12 Cratloe (Clare) 0-11 (after extra-time)
The game finished in a welter of something. Maybe excitement. Samples are being sent to the lab. Castlehaven and Cratloe must have been sick of the sight of each other by the end of 60 minutes, but they collapsed into extra-time all the same, locked in a cold embrace. Mercifully, it ended there.
In harmony with everything that went before neither team scored for the first eight minutes of extra-time, but then Robbie Minihane pounced for a terrific goal. In a game as airless and humourless as this, the Castlehaven manager James McCarthy put the exchange rate for a goal at “four or five points”; by that reckoning the Cork champions were out the gap.
Cratloe did exceptionally well to force a draw, equalising twice in stoppage time with beautifully executed kicks, but they didn’t have the same resources on their bench as Castlehaven did and they could only muster two points in extra-time. In the end they didn’t have the legs to hunt down a deficit.
In the Cork championship Castlehaven have a reputation as an expansive, free-scoring team, but there was no canvass for that kind of approach here. Cratloe were compact without the ball and greedy when they had it, and like so often happens in Gaelic football matches now, the team with a defensive mind dictated the tempo.
“Look, we’re winning,” said McCarthy afterwards. “We have to find a way to win and that’s the way the coaching is gone now at the moment. It isn’t something, personally, I enjoy. But you have to set up your team depending on what you’re playing against and sometimes it’s out of your control what you can do and what you can’t do. I’d say everyone would like a game of football going man to man but we haven’t had those games in a long time. Looking at the television last night [Trillick against Crossmaglen] it is everywhere.
“Do I have to coach patience? Yes. And then especially with a crowd in here that can be heard, they’d be roaring [to go forward]. I used to have to silence our players on the sideline because they’d be saying, ‘take it on, take it on’, and there might be 10 players in front of the man in possession. We are coaching patience, but it is still heads-up football. If the pass is on, we want to go for it.”
Castlehaven played with the wind in the first half but were only level at the break, 0-4 apiece. The Cork champions pressed up aggressively on a few Cratloe kick-outs and threatened to create a couple of goal chances, none of which amounted to anything.
It was emblematic of the first half. Both teams were cagey, the football was ponderous and tortuous. Cratloe were content to soak up whatever pressure Castlehaven could muster and then build their attacks carefully, like they were making a Jenga tower.
Both teams had scoreless spells that dragged on for more than 10 minutes, and there were only flashes of enterprise or urgency. Cathal O’Hanlon landed a couple of lovely points for Cratloe and Enda Boyce kicked the outstanding point of the first half, into the wind from about 35 metres out.
Castlehaven equalised three times in the first half, but neither team led by more than a point at any stage until the eighth minute of extra-time. There was a deadlocked 17-minute spell in the middle of the second half when the scores were tied and it was hard to see where a winner was going to come from.
The outstanding Brian Hurley gave it his best shot in the last minute of normal time. In a rare piece of blinding skill, the Cork full-forward landed a point with his left foot, into the wind, from outside the Cratloe 45 – the sixth score for him in an impressive seven point haul.
After that, stoppage time turned into a riot. David Collins kicked a magnificent equaliser, Castlehaven went down the field and regained the lead through their captain Mark Collins, and then, with their last attack, Boyce brought Cratloe level again.
The score that finally broke the game apart was a beauty. Minihane, introduced as a second-half sub, caught a Castlehaven kick-out, and four or five phases later, was on the end of a Jack Cahalane pass, ghosting inside the Cratloe defence. With a cool change of direction he opened up one side of the Cratloe net and stuck it.
Castlehaven: D Cahalane, J O’Regan, R Maguire (0-1), R Walsh, T O’Mahony, D Cahalane, C Maguire, C Cahalane, A Whelton, J O’Neill, B Hurley (0-7, 0-3 frees), S Browne, M Collins (0-1), J Cahalane (0-2), M Hurley. Subs: C O’Driscoll for Browne (43 mins); R Minihane 1-0 for Whelton (45 mins); C O’Sullivan for O’Neill (48 mins); J O’Driscoll for O’Regan (57 mins); J O’Regan for J O’Driscoll (60 mins); J O’Driscoll 0-1 for Maguire (79 mins); D Whelton for T O’Mahony (80 mins); M Maguire for B Hurley (80 mins).
Cratloe: P Chaplin, D Collins (0-1), K Hartnett, L Markham, E Boyce (0-2), M Brennan, R McNamara, D Ryan (0-1), C Ryan (0-1), S Neville, S Collins, C O’Hanlon (0-2), R Considine, C McInerney (0-4 frees), P Collins. Subs: J McInerney for Considine (53 mins); O Murphy for McNamara; T Rooney for O’Hanlon (55 mins); C O’Hanlon for P Collins (77 mins); P Collins for D Ryan (80 mins)
Referee: Johnny Hayes (Limerick)
