The last knockings of the year’s football, the last cups to be lifted.
In Mallow, Dr Crokes won their ninth Munster title. In Armagh, Errigal Ciarán won their third Ulster. It all means that 2025 will begin with Kerry and Tyrone clubs facing off in an All-Ireland semi-final. That’ll shorten Christmas.
Predictably enough, the Ulster final was the tighter affair, Errigal eventually coming through by 1-8 to 0-10. They played the last 20 minutes with a man advantage after Kilcoo’s Daryll Branagan walked for a needless elbow but the Tyrone team still needed an injury-time winner to see it out.
In a team containing half a dozen Tyrone stalwarts, Peter Óg McCartan is one of Errigal’s lesser lights but he curled in the winner on 63 minutes.
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“Peter Óg is an exceptional player,” said manager Enda McGinley afterwards. “So many of our players live in the shadows of our stars and yet we know what they are capable of too. Thankfully Peter Óg stepped up today but on other days Joe Oguz has stepped up, Ben McDonnell, Peter Harte, the Canavans themselves have stepped up. I’m delighted for those boys – they’ve been on the road a long time within Tyrone and have taken plenty of knock backs.
“The dressing-room before the game was just one of those special places where you just know there’s a hunger, energy and pride in them that it’s going to take something very special to beat them. Everyone knows Kilcoo have nothing to make up in terms of an additional reputation, they are a phenomenal side. But I knew our boys were [in] a special place beforehand.”
For Kilcoo, this was a second Ulster final defeat in three seasons. After the wild ecstasy of their 2021 All-Ireland, they can’t seem to escape provincial gravity any more. They were terrific in patches against Errigal but, as manager Karl Lacey pointed out afterwards, they were authors of their own downfall at times too.
“Obviously very disappointed,” Lacey said.
“When we look back on our own performance, we probably didn’t do enough with the ball in the first half. We just didn’t do enough with the ball. Put it as simply as that. We weren’t good enough on attack, we weren’t composed enough on attack. We had a lot of fumbles, a lot of handling errors, a lot of forced passes, a lot of poor decisions in key areas.”
In Munster, Dr Crokes took their sweet time about putting an end to Loughmore-Castleiney’s incredible winter but ultimately they had too much in the second half.
Having gone in at the break just a point ahead, Crokes were thankful to Tony Brosnan and Micheál Burns for the second half spurt that earned them a 0-15 to 1-6 victory.
“It was physical, very physical,” said Burns afterwards. “I was close to the line a few times. I had a yellow card and a foul fairly close to each other. I had to control myself a small bit better for the rest of the game.
“But they got numbers back and there was a bit of a breeze there and it was tough to kick into. But we weathered it. I thought we did well to be up a point at half-time. We kept it cool at half-time and came out in the second half and I thought our play in the second half was unbelievable.”
For Loughmore, there were no hard feelings. They got a late goal to take the bare look off the scoreboard but they were outdone by the better team, nothing more and nothing less. They will enjoy their Christmas now – the winter of 2024 brought them a Tipperary double. No bone to pick.
“If you said to us that you were going to win the double at the start of this year, we’d have bitten your hand off for it,” said manager Shane Hennessy. “To do it for the third time is amazing. It’s hard today to look back on it because we’re so disappointed about the result.
“But in a few weeks, when time passes, we’ll reflect and say it was an unreal year. We were unbeaten in championship in hurling and football his year, nobody was able to beat us in Tipperary. It’d be a fair achievement if someone does it again. Nine games in hurling and six games in football unbeaten is serious going and something we can be proud of as a team.”
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