TV View: Hurling's Bruce Springsteen sings Cork's praises before Tipperary's glory day

Irish Times

a day ago

Cork
made the sport of hurling look like a decidedly easy pursuit on Saturday. When
Dublin
staged a mini-revival, what did they do? Inserted a pin in their balloon of hope. Without as much as perspiring.
'Around the 25-minute mark, Dublin started to claw it back a little bit, how did ye guys reset?' Damien Lawlor asked man of the match Alan Connolly after the game.
'I dunno, really,' he shrugged, 'we just went and scored a goal, like.'
Which they did, seven times. Not to mention the 26 points. There was smoke coming out of the Croke Park scoreboard, it never stopped ticking over.
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To a man, 'lethal' was the verdict of our panellists on Cork's attack, even if they conceded that the Dubs' defence had been a bit on the loose side. Jamesie O'Connor, over on the BBC, was left purring, although that was probably as much to do with Mark Sidebottom describing him as 'hurling's Bruce Springsteen'.
But Cork bossed it, so by Liam Sheedy's reckoning, when Sunday game,
Tipperary
and
Kilkenny
were playing for
All-Ireland
silver. Will there there even be any point in the victors turning up for the final? The 2025 hurling championship had, after all, already been decided.
Granted, he made this observation with a grin, his eyes rolling heavenwards, such had been the nature of the appraisal of Cork after their dismantling of Dublin. 'I'm not sure if they gave them the cup on the way home,' he said.
Form-wise, then, Cork are in the pink, which, incidentally, Liam was too. Literally. That jacket of his was like something you'd have seen on a dashing saxophonist in a 1960s showband. An energy-saving item of clothing it was too – every time he appeared on our screens, he lit up the room, so there was no need to switch on the lights on a dreary day.
But, yes, that Cork attack was a sight to behold. Ruthless too. At times it was akin to watching a cat acting the maggot with a mouse.
Back on RTÉ, Dónal Óg Cusack was trying to stay humble, even under sustained provocation from Anthony Daly and Henry Shefflin, refusing to rule out the possibility of Tipp or Kilkenny putting it up to his lads in a fortnight.
Tim O'Mahony gives a demonstration of Cork's lethality against Dublin. Photograph: Ryan Byrne/Inpho
'It's a fierce game to look forward to,' he said of Sunday's semi-final, 'it's like two royal estates going back to war with each other.'
And come Sunday, Jackie Tyrrell echoed that view. 'What's going to happen out here today?' Joanne Cantwell asked him. 'Absolute world war three,' he said, almost like there was some hurling history between the counties.
All concerned, though, while not wanting to be offensive, intimated that the Tipp fans needed satnavs to find Croke Park, so long had it been since they were there for a championship game. And after the start Kilkenny had, you'd a notion it'd be a while before they'd see it again.
But. In a half of two halves, Tipp woke from their slumber, their ability to insert the sliotar in the onion bag no small help, their lead at half-time 3-11 to 0-16.
The second half? A zinger. Some day someone will be able to explain how Oisín O'Donoghue scored that 70th-minute goal for 14-man Tipp with next to zero backlift, but it won't be any day soon.
'Some finish, some finish, some finish,' as his comrade Noel McGrath said when RTÉ showed him the replay. Jackie and Ursula Jacob's jaws were on the floor too, but that might still have been due to Liam's pink jacket.
As for Robert Doyle's goal-line save, ah here. It was very tremendous stuff. Although in their post-match chats with RTÉ, it was hard to tell whether Liam Cahill or Derek Lyng was the winning manager. Drained, the pair of them.
So, just the 13 goals and 97 points in the two semi-finals, the RTÉ panel buzzing for the final. And even if Liam suspected that Liam MacCarthy was on the bus to Cork, neither Ursula nor Jackie ruled out his county's hopes of redirecting its journey.
'Tipp,' said Jackie, 'have the ability to come out of nowhere every so often, pinching an All Ireland ... and then hibernating for 20 years.'
Liam came close to decking him. He's clinging to the hope that come July 20th he'll be, well, tickled pink.