Cork 1-30

Clare 1-14

JOHNNY CAROLAN REPORTS

GETTING to the Munster senior hurling championship final was the aim and that was achieved, perhaps more easily than expected – now Cork’s mission is to win it.

If there was a school of thought that losing Sunday’s game against Clare at SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh was the clever approach, avoiding the decider and taking the back-door route to Croke Park in third place, it held no truck with Cork manager Ben O’Connor.

They were rarely less than comfortable here, Brian Hayes’s goal shortly before half-time helping them a 1-13 to 0-7 interval lead, and the only question in the second period was what size the winning margin would be.

Ultimately, the 16-point win was Cork’s biggest over Clare in the championship since 1988 – of more recent import is that the Banner hadn’t been beaten since 2021 while they were also the last visitors to win at the Páirc.

That sequence now stands at 12 matches, ahead of a return there for the provincial final against Limerick. Should Cork lose that, a quarter-final against Offaly would provide a chance to make it to the semis, but O’Connor isn’t looking at it in those terms, either.

‘Careers are short,’ he said, ‘and, when you finish your career, you’re judged on what you’ve won.

‘There’s no point in entering a competition if you have no interest in winning it. The boys here, a lot of them only have a few medals, so they want to stash away a few more. I suppose that’s the way they’re looking at it.

‘I think I’ve five myself, five Munster medals; I respect what a Munster medal means to fellas around the place. Them lads are going to be same as I am, they just want to be winning games. They want to be playing on the big days as well.

‘We had maybe 35,000 Cork people out there today – it’ll be a little bit more half and half the next day. I can just imagine the Cork crowd will get a few extra tickets here and there. We might have the majority.’

Diarmuid Healy shows his determination in breaking past the challenge of Clare's Cian Galvin. (Photo: George Hatchell)

In terms of the game itself, Cork maintained the momentum that had brought them to that stage while Clare showed that the 15-point loss to Limerick was a closer reflection of their standing than the 11-point victory over Tipperary.

That said, things might have been different had Ian Galvin converted either of his early goal chances, Patrick Collins saving the first and the other coming back off the post, but once Cork settled they were far superior.

Shane Barrett was excellent at centre-forward while the half-back line of Eoin and Robert Downey and Mark Coleman – stand-in captain in the absence of Darragh Fitzgibbon – lorded matters.

It was 0-12 to 0-7 when Eoin Downey’s sideline cut found William Buckley, who brilliantly spun away from Rory Hayes before combining with his St Finbarr’s clubmate Brian Hayes, who got his first goal of the championship.

Tony Kelly’s sixth point briefly for Clare cut the gap on the restart but from the puckout, Patrick Collins went long and Hayes’s lay-off to Tim O’Mahony led to Buckley scoring his third.

After O’Connell set up Barrett for his fifth, Clare wing-back Diarmuid Ryan replied – he was the only starter for the Banner to score more than once from play – but thereafter followed a ten-minute period where Cork outscored their opponents by 0-8 to 0-1, with Shane Kingston on target following his introduction while Buckley continued to impress and Alan Connolly would go on to finish with 11 points.

Clare sub Shane Meehan did have a late goal to deny Cork a clean sheet but otherwise it was plain sailing.

Cork’s four wins from four make them the first team since Tipperary in 2019 to go through the round-robin with a perfect record. Those of a superstitious nature might point to the fact that the Premier lost that year’s Munster final to Limerick, but ultimately it’s a sign of consistency and appetite.

‘We made no secret that we wanted to win every game,’ O’Connor said.

‘We didn’t do it in the league but now in the championship so far, in the round-robin, we’ve four of them won.

‘It’s a strange situation when you’re coming up and we had three out of three and you still weren’t guaranteed to be in a Munster final. We treated today as a semi-final, that’s what lads were on about all week – it’s a semi-final, we want to get to a Munster final.

‘We’re where we want to be.’

Scorers

Cork: Alan Connolly 0-11 (8f), Shane Barrett 0-5, Brian Hayes 1-2, William Buckley 0-5, Shane Kingston 0-3, Barry Walsh 0-2, Tim O’Mahony (1f), Diarmuid Healy 0-1, Eoin Downey each.

Clare: Tony Kelly 0-8 (6f, 1 65), Shane Meehan 1-1, Diarmuid Ryan 0-3, Shane O’Donnell, Colm Galvin 0-1 each.

Cork: P Collins; N O’Leary, D Cahalane, S O’Donoghue; E Downey, R Downey, M Coleman; T O’Mahony, T O’Connell; B Walsh, S Barrett, D Healy; A Connolly, B Hayes, W Buckley.

Subs: S Kingston for Hayes (45), G Millerick for Cahalane (55), C O’Brien for R Downey (57), H O’Connor for O’Mahony, P Power for B Walsh (58).

Clare: E Quilligan; D Lohan, D McInerney, A Hogan; D Ryan, J Conlon, N O’Farrell; C Malone, T Kelly; D Fitzgerald, D Stritch, S Rynne; I Galvin, P Duggan, S O’Donnell.

Subs: R Hayes for Lohan (13, injured), D Reidy for Stritch (22-27), C Galvin for Conlon (42), J Kirwan for Fitzgerald (45), S Meehan for I Galvin (47), Reidy for Malone (57).

Referee: Johnny Murphy (Limerick).