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Irish Times
04-07-2025
- Sport
- Irish Times
Malachy Clerkin: Cork's beautiful miracle has reached an excruciating point
It's entirely possible that the Cork hurlers will not win the All-Ireland . Just saying, like. This is not meant as an insult, nor even just to tweak the proud Cork noses as they head for Croke Park this weekend. It just seems like a good time to point out that there is a world in which 2025 ends in the same way as every one of the past 20 seasons have. That is to say, with somebody other than a Cork captain singing and bucklepping on the steps of the Hogan Stand. We are at the point of peak Cork giddiness. Everyone – or at any rate, everyone outside the Dublin dressingroom – assumes that this weekend is a straightforward tick of a box. Cork didn't come this far to lose to Dublin, for the love of Ring. Check the Irish Rail website – the Cork-Heuston trains on All-Ireland final day are already sold out. So now, right now, this is when all is for the best in this best of all possible Cork worlds. They're odds-on favourites for the All-Ireland heading into the last four. This has to be a unique occurrence for a team looking to end a famine, or very close to it. READ MORE It can't have happened too many times before that a county who hasn't lifted Liam MacCarthy in such a long time are odds-on shots before they've even played the All-Ireland semi-final. Who would even be the candidates for a list like that? Limerick in 1994? Clare in '95? No way. Maybe, at a push, Limerick in '96. They had Antrim in the semi-final and would have felt they had little to fear from Galway and Wexford on the other side of the draw. They were probably favourites before the semi-finals but they wouldn't have been 4-5 shots, surely. A bookie would do slim business at that price. So we're in new territory here. And yet, it somehow feels like old territory too. Cork, Tipperary and Kilkenny filling three of the four spots in the All-Ireland semi-finals, the blue bloods reasserting their command over the old game. Stick your revolution, lads. The empire is striking back. Now, not to jinx it or anything, but Cork have never won Liam MacCarthy when all three have still been involved at this point. This is the sixth time it's happened, since you ask. Kilkenny have won four of the other five, Tipp did it in 2010. In fact, Cork have only once made it to the final in these circumstances. Joe Canning: Most people think it's Cork's All-Ireland to lose and that suits Kilkenny just fine — Irish Times Sport (@IrishTimesSport) That's why this is such a golden moment for all the Rebels pouring into the capital this weekend, their spirits high and their voices higher. Rightly or wrongly, there are no nerves to deal with here. If Dublin turn them over, it will be an immediate apocalypse, a sudden and brutal cardiac shock. But it's the kind of thing they can't feel worried about until they're stuck in the middle of it. If they win through to the final, that's when the nerves will start to infest and to spread. Cork hurling supporters are bullish but they are not bulletproof. They will feel they're better than Tipp and better than Kilkenny too but they won't be able to truly trust it. A fortnight is a long time to think about all the ways you can crash and burn, especially when you've crashed and burned in the past four finals you've been to. But that's a worry for Monday and beyond. In the here and now, we get to observe the Cork hurling albatross with its wings at full span. Watch it swoop upon Dublin city, haughty and noble and unstoppable, picking off the bits it fancies as it goes. Eating the best food the capital has to offer, drinking its porter, still full sure that the English Market and the Hi-B are superior. And quite right too. The gathering speed of the Cork hurling bandwagon has been one of the beautiful miracles of Irish sport over the past decade or so. Nobody had ever sold out an All-Ireland hurling semi-final until last year and now they're about to do it again. And not against Limerick or Clare or Wexford or any of the other mad-bastard support bases. Against Dublin, who didn't even fill Parnell Park for their Leinster matches. This will be Cork's eighth championship sell-out in a row. For any GAA team to do that is a wild achievement at a time when ticket prices have never been as high and when the cost of living is through the roof. For Cork to do it while not even winning an All-Ireland (yet?) is bananas. Yes, fine, Cork people love their hurling. But they didn't just start loving it in the past couple of years. It's easy to forget that they didn't even make it out of Munster in 2023. This is the perfect storm of a likable team, a manager of obvious decency and humanity, a starving fan base, a much-dumped-upon stadium and a county board that is finally looking outward after decades of insularity. It has grown organically, gradually, Corkily. And now it's gathering speed. They're hurtling through that twilight zone where people think of them as the best team in the country without them actually having done the thing yet. Most presume they will. But they might not. It's a precarious, delicious, excruciating position to be in. You'd feel for the hoors, if you didn't know better.
Irish Times
05-06-2025
- Sport
- Irish Times
Cork believe goals win games but Limerick's sharpshooting can get the job done
The Cork hurlers have scored 19 more goals than their Limerick counterparts so far this year – proof if needed that not all journeys towards silverware follow the same route. Pat Ryan's Rebels enter Saturday's Munster SHC final having bagged 27 goals over the course of the season – league and championship – while Limerick have managed just eight. The Rebels have scored at least one goal in all 11 of their competitive outings in 2025, while Limerick have raised green flags in just five of their 10 outings. Yet 50 per cent of Limerick's eight-goal haul was scored against Cork – one in the league and three in the group stages of the provincial championship. READ MORE But if Cork have been dealing largely in the currency of goals, Limerick continue to profit from their long-range shooting, the Treaty County proving to be masters of outpointing the opposition. John Kiely's men were the only one of the five teams in the Munster SHC to break the 100-point mark this term, raising 101 white flags. Given their contrasting attacking weaponry, the defensive shapes of both teams will be telling on Saturday as to how each intend on stemming the other's scoring threat. 'From my experience, you'd always set up differently regarding playing a team that you know are predominantly goalscorers. You'd set up a different way if you know that they're going to be an outside and shooting team,' explains former Tipperary hurler Patrick 'Bonner' Maher. 'Your tactics would be justified by the team you're playing, generally. That's how we would have always approached it. 'I'm looking forward to both Cork and Limerick coming up against each other and just seeing those two different styles.' Limerick's Shane O'Brien scores a goal against Galway in the NHL Division 1A game at the Gaelic Grounds. Photograph: James Lawlor/Inpho Cork have had 10 different goalscorers with Brian Hayes topping the list on eight goals – five in the league and three in the championship. Hayes has also been directly involved in setting up as many goals as he has scored. Limerick's goalscoring has been shared by four players in 2025 – Shane O'Brien (three), Aaron Gillane (two), Adam English (two) and Will O'Donoghue (one). Cork really hit a goalscoring streak at the latter end of the league – netting 13 goals in their last three games, including the league final win over Tipp. That green-flag frenzy helped the Leesiders win a first Division One league title since 1998. Goal-scoring is a factor Cork coach Donal O'Rourke spoke about at the launch of this year's Munster Championship. 'We'd done a lot of work on it. It's a big thing with us because we know with the style of player we have that we're going to create goal chances,' he stated. 'Pat really made it a priority. We did zone in on it and we've kind of borne the fruits a little bit over the last couple of games. But it's not something we want to take our eye off. We just need to keep being very clinical and execute the chances when they're presented to us.' Generally, they have continued to do so in the games since – scoring two against Clare, four against Tipperary, one against Limerick and a brace against Waterford. However, if Cork's inside line has been wreaking havoc this season then Limerick's much vaunted middle eight has continued to break the spirit of opponents with accurate long-range attacks. Limerick had 11 different scorers when they beat Cork in the group stages last month. The midfield and half-forward line axis contributed 1-11 with Adam English, Gearóid Hegarty, Cian Lynch and Tom Morrissey all getting on the scoreboard. Limerick's approach seems to be based on a target of manufacturing around 40 shots per game – confident that with such a number of efforts their long-range shooters can afford to drop some wide but still outscore the opposition. Results in recent years would suggest that's pretty sound logic. Kilkenny's Martin Keoghan scores a goal against Offaly in the Leinster Championship third round fixture at Nowlan Park. Photograph: Ken Sutton/Inpho When the sides met at the Gaelic Grounds last month, Limerick had 39 shots and Cork had 31. Limerick won that fixture pulling up. That also just happens to be Limerick's most productive day this season in terms of goalscoring – Gillane netting two and English with the other. 'You can't take it away from Limerick either, if Limerick want to score goals they're well able to score goals too,' adds Maher. 'They can mix it both ways. As can Cork. Both teams have varying styles, that's a great thing to have in your armour when you're a team that can mix it.' And the same is true of Sunday's Leinster SHC final. No team has scored more goals than Kilkenny during this year's provincial championships – Derek Lyng's side amassing 15 goals over the course of the round-robin stages. Galway scored nine goals, with six of those coming against Antrim. Kilkenny scored at least one goal in all of their group games, while Galway failed to raise green flags in two matches. However, Galway were the highest point-scoring team across the two provincial championships, the Tribesmen scoring 131 points. Kilkenny hit 113 points. The four respective Munster and Leinster finalists have carved different scoring pathways to this stage of the season. And provincial hurling final weekend is once again likely to demonstrate there remains more than one way to skin a cat. Cork's goals in 2025 League 2 v Wexford; 1 v Limerick; 1 v Tipperary; 1 v Kilkenny; 6 v Clare; 4 v Galway; 3 v Tipp. Total: 18 Championship 2 v Clare; 4 v Tipperary; 1 v Limerick; 2 v Waterford Total: 9 Overall: 27 Limerick's goals in 2025 League 1 v Cork; 1 v Galway; 1 v Wexford Total: 3 Championship 2 v Tipperary; 3 v Cork Total: 5 Overall: 8
