All-Ireland Club SHC Semi-final Kilcormac 1-20 Thurles Sarsfields 1-14:Two cracking AIB All-Ireland club hurling semi-finals got under way in Portlaoise on Saturday with an exposition of two of the championship's great mysteries: the superior intensity of rural as opposed to town teams and the chronic underachievement of Tipperary clubs.

Kilcormac-Killoughey, their first county title just fresh on the mantelpiece and available at Lotto-style odds, took their unflinching work ethic into the arena against Sarsfields’ glittering array of inter-county talent and managed to grind to dust the high hopes of the favourites. For the second year running Offaly have a club in the All-Ireland final.

“We came in here today and knew we were going to be up against it because they are a very good team,” said winning coach Danny Owens, “but our lads are relentless. They’re very fit, very focused, very determined and they have a lot of skill. When you have those attributes in a team you’re always in with a chance and we knew that if we could get under their skin a little bit today we would always be in with a chance.”

That summed up an afternoon when the underdogs had effectively to win the match twice but their confidence had steadily grown from an opening phase when they appeared to be just hanging on to making a match of it on the scoreboard to opening up a lead, which then almost evaporated before they stormed back to finish out the match with an uninterrupted six-point barrage in the final 10 minutes.

Their industry and ferocious commitment were deployed consistently to buy them the opportunities to demonstrate their skill. Ciarán Slevin, identified as their most influential player in the provincial campaign, again provided the cutting edge.

Overall tally

His reliability from frees kept the scoreboard moving in an overall tally of 0-11 but that wasn’t at the expense of more mundane duties and he worked his wing every bit as willingly as his team.

The discipline of Kilcormac’s orthodox defensive formation held and Lar Corbett was left to his own devices on one of those afternoons when he looked to be dancing to his own music. Also damagingly for the Tipp champions was Pádraic Maher’s inability to exert his usually big influence, as Kilcormac kept the puck-out ball away from his zone.

Yet the match looked to have swung just before half-time after Kilcormac had taken the lead for the first time at 0-7 to 0-6. Immediately Aidan McCormack picked off a point to equalise and seconds later Pádraic Maher found Pa Bourke with a great delivery and the latter finished clinically to the net.

Quality play

Quality play producing scores was exactly the way to erode the outsiders’ self-belief but critically Kilcormac hit back ferociously. Brian Leonard bazooka-ed over a free from his own 65 and then Daniel Currams, dribbled the ball through the Thurles defence and fired to the net and ensure a half-time lead of 1-8 to 1-7.

The momentum stayed with them and rapid-fire points from Conor Mahon, another free from both Slevin and Leonard and a sharp effort from Currams pushed Thurles’s needle into the red zone.

Their recovery was impressive. Replacements Ger O’Grady and especially Ronan Maher tightened up the challenge and they began to win the breaks.

There were goal chances critically untaken – a great ball by Lar Corbett into Bourke ended in the shot flying wide of the far post and another into Richie Ruth drew a block from Conor Slevin – but Denis Maher’s hard work produced a point and kick started a run which saw Kilcormac outscored by 0-6 to 0-1 and under intense pressure even if a one-point margin, 1-14 to 1-13 remained.

But instead of folding the Offaly champions came again with the match winning sequence, including an opening blast of three points in the 54th minute. Thurles had nothing left apart from a token injury-time point when all was lost.

Thurles manager Séamus Quinn said: “In the second half we had two chances that if they had gone in, things might have swung the other way. . . they’re a fine team and they hurled well and they’re a tightly knit group: pride, passion and no little skill – they’re a fair team. As I said to them in there we didn’t underestimate them for a second.”