Hindsight is easy. It’s what everyone does as soon as the final whistle blows. It’s what we’re doing here now. But before you knew what happened next, put yourself in the Cork dressing room at half-time last Sunday. They had just scored 1-16 against a sweeper. Without being anywhere near their free-flowing best, they were six points up in the All-Ireland hurling final.
Maybe the goal before half-time helped create a false narrative and you could argue that Cork didn’t deserve to be so far ahead, but if you’re the Cork management in that scenario, you’re not thinking about changing anything significant. Just like Tipperary in the other dressing room, you’re sticking to your guns.
That looks like a mistake on Cork’s part now. At half-time last Sunday, though, nobody was screaming that Cork needed to do something radical.
Ten years ago, I played on a Galway team that was three points ahead against Kilkenny at half-time in an All-Ireland final and had played well enough to be further clear. By that stage Galway hadn’t won an All-Ireland in 27 years. We thought our time had come. In the first half, we had played well enough to win.
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In the second half, Kilkenny blew us away. They just took over. The scoring wasn’t nearly as dramatic as last Sunday, but we only scored 1-4 in the second half. The goal came in stoppage time, when Kilkenny were seven points clear.
Did we tighten up? Probably. Looking back, it felt like everyone was almost waiting for someone else to step up. If the Cork players are honest with themselves, they’ll probably admit to the same thing.
But when you strip that away, Cork lost the tactical battle hands-down. It wasn’t just that Cork didn’t manage Tipp’s seventh defender, but they didn’t seem to know what to do with the spare man at the back Tipp had given them.
In the first half, Rob Downey was being run ragged across the field chasing puckouts. The Tipp half forwards were making lateral runs that were designed to create chaos. Cork played into that trap. Against the Tipp puckout they should have stayed zonal.
The Cork defenders who were picking up Tipp’s five forwards were under much more pressure than they should have been. Tipp were attracting Cork’s half backs out the field and dragging Cork players into their attacking half, where Tipp already had numbers. All of that was creating space at the other end.
In the middle of the last decade a lot of teams were playing with sweepers, even Cork. I remember we played them in an All-Ireland quarter-final in Thurles when Brian Murphy was their spare man.
You often heard people say that you must mark the sweeper, even if that meant sacrificing somebody. I didn’t try to mark Murphy that day, but I positioned myself behind him and made sure he knew I was there. In that way I occupied him more than he wanted to be occupied.
Cork didn’t try to dictate anything with Tipp’s seventh defender. He set up exactly as Tipp planned and Cork didn’t do anything to disrupt it.
Tipp had clearly worked out Cork’s puckouts. Not just the long ones aimed at Brian Hayes and a cluster of players around the D, that everyone is expecting, but the kind of puckouts that worked against Dublin and other teams during the year.
Finding Tim O’Mahony in a pocket of space had really worked at various times during the season. They tried it twice early in the game, straight after Tipp had a free inside the Cork 45. This was obviously a trigger, but both times Tipp snuffed it out. While the Cork half-backs were scrambling around trying to deal with Tipp puckouts, the Tipp backs were basically comfortable on Cork’s restarts.
Tipp’s first goal was a huge turning point. It was a mistake by Patrick Collins and there have been too many of those over the last couple of years. In the avalanche of scores that came later, Cork’s response to the goal has been forgotten.
Shane Barrett scored a great point directly from the puck-out and Tipp didn’t score for the next four minutes. Their bounce from the goal wasn’t immediate. In those four minutes, Séamus Harnedy came on as a sub and missed a great chance to draw Cork level.
None of that was important at the end, but momentum is a volatile thing. Harnedy could have carried the ball another 20 yards to make sure of the score and everyone would have said that Cork had responded well to the goal. Four minutes after that, Eoin Downey was sent off and the game was effectively over.
Tipp took a chance by going with an extra defender. Nobody had ever won an All-Ireland with a sweeper before. If Patrick Horgan had scored that free after half-time to put Cork seven points up, it wouldn’t have taken much more for Tipp to start questioning their approach. Cork needed to push Tipp to that brink.
In the event, they couldn’t. Cork have had the most potent attack all year, but on Sunday four of their six forwards were shut down. Only Barrett and Diarmuid Healy emerged with credit.
How many of the Tipp forwards were shut down? None. Darragh McCarthy had his best game of the year, John McGrath had an incredible second half, Jake Morris, Jason Forde and Andrew Ormond all contributed with the sliotar and without it. Tipp won the All-Ireland with five forwards.
There will be a lot of soul-searching in Cork over the coming months and a lot of blame shared around. That’s just the nature of the beast. After the 2015 All-Ireland, Anthony Cunningham was forced out as the Galway manager. That’s not going to happen in Cork. If Pat Ryan wants to stay, I’d be certain that the players and the county board wouldn’t have any objection.
No matter how close they got to the summit, Cork are back at the bottom of the mountain again.
