ALL-IRELAND FOOTBALL FINAL:IT DIDN'T end in fiesta. Nor was it a damp squib. Cork won by the slender width of a point with Down snapping at their heels into extra-time. Yet when yesterday's All-Ireland final came to an end all you could sense was the deep and abiding relief of the Cork football community. Phew.
Cork got ahead by three points with 10 minutes left and won by a single point. Nail-biting but not heart-stopping? Yes.
Deserved? Just about. Especially for what they have been through.
Will they care about how lacking in beauty it was? Not a whit.
This was a seventh All-Ireland title for Cork but the first in 20 years, a win delivered by a team who own customer loyalty cards and their own snug in the Last Chance Saloon.
It was an odd final. Down surprised themselves and others by coming so far this year. Their grief at the end of it all was worn lightly and hidden by their grace in defeat.
Cork, on the other hand, needed this win like they needed oxygen. Had they been beaten, this side which has consistently amounted to less than the sum of its parts would have been bound for the wrecker’s yard.
Instead, they won some immortality and several seasons of reprieve long after they should have won their first All-Ireland as a team.
It won’t be any the less sweet for that, and it has to be said there were scenes in the second half when the remarkable double act of Daniel Goulding and Donncha O’Connor were hauling Cork across the hot coals which brought smiles to our faces. When either man would score (and between them they scored all but two of Cork’s 16-point total) they would leap in the air and attempt to prod the crowd into life with some arm-waving and cajoling.
And briefly the crowd would buy into it, before the thoughts returned of all the sad days following this team. And so they protected themselves emotionally and allowed just a few brief shouts of “Reh-bells! Reh-bells” to punctuate the drizzle.
As a game it adhered to the cliche of two halves, the first of which Cork didn’t really play in, the second of which they did enough in. When we reached the half-hour point with Cork five points behind and still to score from play and not having made any notable changes except shoving Paul Kerrigan a little farther up the field, we began to wonder was this team cursed by Big Day paralysis.
Down, looking like a team which had got dressed in the dark with their odd-looking shirts and two styles of socks, weren’t playing especially well. They were showing glimpses of their celebrated attacking fluency and running up a decent bill in terms of wides.
Cork appeared to have got the match-ups right in terms of Marty Clarke and Benny Coulter, but still it looked as if Down would win despite themselves. Down would win because this Cork team don’t do winning and Down do nothing but.
Probably the game needed the electric shock that a goal or a good fist-fight generates, but Cork were determined to do this the hard way. They pulled Down back to a three-point lead by half-time, but conceded the first score of the second half to go four behind again.
“There was no point in panicking,” said Graham Canty of the Cork dressingroom during the break. “We were behind for most of the game. A lot of the team had played in All-Ireland finals and we lost them. It probably counts for a lot. I started a number of the games, and even at half-time if you’re behind – or even if you were ahead – you knew the management would unload the bench anyway. It is great to know that as well. It keeps you calm.”
The urgency levels didn’t increase notably, but Goulding scored another point from a free, and then from the team bench Cork drew a needle filled with adrenalin. The needle was in the shape of Graham Canty and his introduction brought us a shiver of anticipation. How humiliating would it be for Cork to introduce their totem so dramatically and then to go and lose the game for him?
Didn’t of course. They nailed the deal down between the 46th and 60th minutes when they scored seven of the eight points which registered on the scoreboard.
The best of those was the second in the series when Ciarán Sheehan played a superb pass to Goulding who scored a wonderful point and for once didn’t have to work at stirring the crowd up afterwards. They loved it.
Conor Counihan came to the press room of the living dead and emphasised the theme of the afternoon. Relief.
“Relief, at the end of the day,” the manager said. “It’s fantastic for the lads, each and every one of them. I spoke to them and we have 30 good guys here, but there are a lot of guys down the years who for one reason or another we had to move on from and those guys are part of this.
“And the last 20 years, we were landed with a fantastic group of players. They made it hard for themselves, but that makes it all the sweeter.”
Sweet and slow was their coming, but this Cork team have arrived and the suspicion is that they have greatness in them. Yesterday may yet prove to have been about shedding the skin of their inhibition.
