EAMONN SWEENEY
This was the best game of Gaelic football in Croke Park all season
JUST when we thought our chance had passed, they went and saved the best till last. On the final day of the inter-county football season Cork and Dublin provided the thriller Croke Park has been crying out for. The women gave us what the men couldn’t.
Last year’s ladies football final was all about the attendance and the occasion; this year was about the contest and the quality. It was a game charged with electricity and palpably informed by the knowledge that this was an era-defining decider.
Reigning All-Ireland champions don’t often have a lot left to prove, but Dublin fell into this category. Last year, and in their 2010 final victory, Dublin profited from the absence of Cork. They picked up the pieces after other counties shocked the Rebels.
It was different for Dublin when Cork turned up. Three times they lost finals by one point. All of those games might have gone Dublin’s way, but Cork, like Glenn Close springing gleefully out of the bath in Fatal Attraction, always had one last shot left.
This final was Cork’s chance to enjoy a Kinshasa moment, regaining their title like Ali did against Foreman by showing that The Greatest can come back to dethrone a usurper.
But it didn’t turn out that way. The champions answered all the questions. It feels like a new era has begun and a truly great team has succeeded the Cork side who defined excellence for so long.
It was a close-run thing for long spells. With seven minutes left only a goal divided the teams before a late fusillade of points finally pulled Dublin clear. The winners’ victory owed an enormous amount to two forwards who may be the most dangerous double act since Thelma and Louise.
Sinead Aherne and Carla Rowe contributed 3-7 between them. Only two of the last seven winning TEAMS have scored more in the final.
Aherne manages to combine awesome competitive focus with a coolness of nerve which suggests she’s still participating in the pre-match kickabout. Her penalty conversion was archetypal: a couple of steps and an emphatic dispatch of the ball into the corner of the net which would have made Socrates proud.
There were gems from play too, most notably the exquisitely curled point two minutes from time which placed an exclamation mark at the end of Dublin’s display.
In that moment Aherne showed that, after a weekend where football’s brutal side reared its ugly head, it can still be an artist’s game.
The captain’s partner in destruction opened her account in the 27th minute by putting the finishing touch to an incisive move involving Noelle Healy and Olwen Carey. It was the kind of opportunity you’d expect an inter-county forward to take, but the ease of Rowe’s finish caught the eye.
She has the quality of opportunism common to all great goal scorers; that ability to instantaneously compute odds and angles and ruthlessly take advantage.
Twelve minutes from time Dublin carved the defence open once again. When Rowe got the ball a defender and the keeper barred the way. A trademark sidestep dismissed the former before a precise finish.
Ten minutes earlier Cork’s Eimear
Scally had a similar chance, but her shot was blocked on the line by the outstanding Niamh Collins.
The contrasting fates of those opportunities summed up a key difference between the teams: The champions always seemed superior in terms of method and composure.
Cork, on the other hand, brought on wonderkid Saoirse Noonan and totally failed to utilise her. Noonan received just a couple of passes and at times it almost seemed like her forward colleagues were racking their brains for new ways to ignore her. Cork’s secret weapon remained secret – through no fault of her own.
But the familiar indomitable spirit kept Cork bouncing back after the concession of goals at key stages. They hung in there thanks to Orla Finn’s frees and to Aine O’Sullivan, who gave as fine a performance in a losing cause as Croke Park has seen.
The Beara woman was everywhere, chasing back to make a couple of crucial dispossessions near her own goal, persistently powering into the Dublin half and scoring an extraordinary goal eight minutes before the break.
When Sinead Goldrick gave away the ball 30 yards from the Dublin goal O’Sullivan’s reaction was immediate, a precise lob over Ciara Trant summoning up memories of Mike Sheehy chipping Paddy Cullen 40 years ago.
Derailed
This time the Dubs were not to be derailed. Mick Bohan’s team are bringing ladies football to a new level with a style which makes Cork’s more deliberate approach seem slightly old-fashioned. Dublin are more direct and place an emphasis on athleticism, with the blistering pace of Niamh McEvoy, Noelle Healy and Lyndsey Davey making the openings for Aherne and Rowe.
They are a team who play at a punishing tempo, their constant use of quick kick-outs indicating a determination to never let up. It is a style almost guaranteed to produce excitement and a superb display by referee Garryowen McMahon also contributed to the breakneck nature of the action. It is now up to other counties to follow Dublin’s lead. If they do, more classic finals lie in store.
The crowd was incredible – 50,141 is more than watched Ireland’s home World Cup play-off game against Denmark, the Leinster-Scarlets Guinness PRO14 final and 10 of the 15 knock-out games in the World Cup in Russia.
But this was so good the attendance figure almost seems beside the point.
Wouldn’t it be great if football was like this all the time?
Dublin are bringing ladies football to a new level with a style that makes Cork’s approach seem slightly old-fashioned