Puckouts and turnovers: the talking points after Cork salvage draw with Clare
Clare's Peter Duggan soars into the air to win the sliotar from Cork's Eoin Downey during the Munster SHC , round 1 at Zimmer Biomet Páirc Chíosóg, Ennis. Picture: Eddie O'Hare
Delighted. Distraught. How those two feelings can co-exist after a game of hurling, who knows. I suppose that’s just the magic of the Munster Senior Hurling Championship.
Cork should have won. They should have walked away with the victory having had a half-time lead so large. Instead minor errors snowballed into near capitulation.
Shane Barrett’s sending off was so unnecessary. A gift to Clare that couldn’t have come at a better time.
They’d already been fired up from the two second half goals. Once they had a third green flag – anything but a Cork defeat would have felt like a miracle.
Credit to the team though, they fought on and did brilliantly to earn that miraculous draw. Far from the first round result they were targeting – but at the end of it all – not a bad one.
A draw away to the All-Ireland Champions. Still with every chance of making the Munster final and a performance that can be built on.
A red card for Cork in the 56th minute is always going to be game changing. But it hampered every aspect of what Pat Ryan’s team had been doing right. Cork had won 14 of their own puckouts, losing only four up to Shane Barrett being sent off.
They won none of Clare’s restarts after. Conor Leen and John Conlon went from struggling in defence to suddenly become immovable objects that Cork could not get past.
The red card completely killed Cork’s challenge, they were desperately hanging on. Cork’s turnovers spiked after the sending off, too. They were scrambling for an answer and a way out.
They couldn’t extinguish the Banner bonfire.
For a man who was one of the main talking points for criticism when it came to Cork hurling this time last year, Patrick Collins’ puckouts have improved tenfold. His ability to go long and short, through the centre or out wide – he did it almost flawlessly against Clare in Ennis on Sunday. It was a huge factor in Cork’s rampant first half.
For the Rebels’ first goal it was Collins’ puckout to Darragh Fitzgibbon that allowed the Charleville man to fire it in on top of the Clare goal. Brian Hayes did what he does best to get the finish.
For the second goal it was again worked out wide, this time to Ethan Twomey. His low ball into Patrick Horgan allowed the Cork forwards to attack to centre. Hoggy gave it Alan Connolly, he played it across to Hayes. The outcome was never in doubt.
An area that Cork showed glimpses, but they needed more. There was a sense of fear in that Clare team right from the off. They knew Cork would target goals. They knew they’d struggle to counter that threat.
Having already conceded the first to Hayes, Clare were under pressure. Playing it out from the back in the aftermath, Conlon was left counting his lucky stars after a sloppy was beautifully intercepted by Connolly. The end result should have been a Cork goal.
But Clare were shaken, that fact compounded when again Cork worked it around their defence with ease for the second goal.
Clare tried to drop deep and counter Cork’s goal threat. All that did was make Cork’s shooting from distance straightforward. Cork were running at the opposition and finding great success.
That changed in the second half. Clare tightened up and stopped Cork from running through the middle, turning over possession far more often. Tim O’Mahony and Rob Downey had been excellent driving through in the first but the latter’s departure with injury really hurt Cork in that regard.
Suddenly they were far from dominant through the middle. They were vulnerable.
Clare, to their credit, did brilliantly to come back. They didn’t panic. Even when they had the extra man, they kept with what was working. The Banner didn’t start shooting wildly, and they were rewarded for it.
Their inaccuracy from frees will need to be addressed next weekend against Waterford, though.
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