Galway maintained their great record against Cork and awakened memories of their previous semi-final ambushes from the moment they burst into this match with a strong opening 10 minutes. Micheál Donoghue has once again set up a new team, combining experience and some really impressive youngsters and they were exceptional.
It’s not a simple system of play but they implement it enthusiastically. I remember Rory Burke – so unfortunate to be injured – saying after a match earlier in the year how much they were all enjoying themselves. It shows.
[ Report: Galway 2-26 Cork 1-18Opens in new window ]
Jason Rabbitte demonstrated amazing maturity in his ability to win ball, hold it up and use the possession well. Cork never got on top of him – a deserved Man of the Match. Darragh Neary brought athleticism and work rate to his win as well as finishing his early goal really well.
They increasingly dominated midfield and Tommy O’Connell was replaced before the end of the third quarter.
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‘Sheer application and quality. It wasn’t anything to do with Galway’ – John Kiely
‘Total domination’: Limerick won the fight first and left underdogs Galway nowhere to go
If this is the last tango for John Kiely’s Limerick, they went out staying true to their own excellence
Their supporters were also back, belting out The Fields of Athenry. They might not always be right when they swing behind the county team but they have seldom been wrong when not turning up. Last year there were just around 15,000 in Limerick to see them beaten by Tipperary.
It shows again the credentials of the league. I was impressed by them from the start and especially in the challenge they put up to eventual winners Limerick in the Gaelic grounds.
The winning of Leinster may not have been any guarantee of progress, given the poor level of competition but it was a box Galway needed to tick and meant an awful lot to them. Their ability to raise their game for the final against Dublin and again for this weekend is a significant marker.
Cork’s problem however was that the shortcomings visible in the Munster final defeat were if anything exacerbated in Croke Park. The team that day didn’t score from play after the 38th minute and got off just 23 shots. They only slightly improved that to 28 against a Galway team that doubled their output, shooting 47 times for their 2-26.
Having recovered from Galway’s breakneck start, Cork reeled them in and led by five at one stage. Alan Walsh got a great goal, and Brian Hayes was uncontrollable, reaching half-time with six points.
The big difference was that the Galway players who had been out of sorts – including Daithi Burke, who really struggled on Hayes, and Conor Whelan, who shot a terrible wide just before the break – stuck at it and turned their performances around.
Whelan was a ball of energy, harassing the Cork defence, and shot two points whereas Burke settled into an improved defence, which worked hard and hunted ravenously to repel attack after attack in the second half.
A significant part of the win was the way in which they reduced the lead to a single point by half-time. It was as if they’d got their second wind. After the break, they buckled into the match and within a few minutes had re-taken the lead, which they never subsequently lost.
The defence tightened up considerably and ominously for Cork, Hayes was wide with his first shot of the second half and in general found himself outnumbered.
Shane Barrett was bottled up and saw his attempt at a last goal well saved by Darach Fahy whereas Darragh Fitzgibbon was sent off for a second yellow card, having not been nearly as prominent as he would have wished.
Cork were so broken by the increased tempo that in the 50th minute, Cathal Mannion (who – a few inaccuracies aside – had a monumental match for Galway, getting on ball all over the middle third and directing play) scored a point from an acre of space with no opponent even in his post code.
This must have been agony for Cork, a rerun of their second-half nightmare in last year’s All-Ireland final. Once again they were playing into the Hill, the non-scoring end in Croke Park and having scored just 0-2 a year ago after half-time, they managed 0-5 on Saturday – not as crippling a differential but more than enough to lose big matches.
The general reaction will be to question Cork’s bottle after another big-match collapse I believe it’s more straightforward. My impression is that too many of the Cork players struggle technically when matches go to Croke Park.
That stage really intensifies the test of hurling skills and is a step up from the rough and tumble pressures of the Munster championship. It results in aimless play, short passes over and back in front of their own goals. It was making me jittery, never mind their supporters.
Ultimately, when they went up the field, they weren’t winning enough ball despite Brian Hayes obviously having Daithi Burke in all kinds of trouble. It helped with the comeback in the second quarter but the attack was nowhere near as multi-faceted as Galway’s, able to shoot from distance and generating nearly twice as many shots.
Galway are back and it’s a welcome return because new contenders are always welcome and it indicates that there is some life yet in Leinster hurling.
