WALSH’S TRUE CLASS
Galway star adds gloss for Crokes as Naas fall just short
IN keeping with the county they represent, Kilmacud Crokes moved to the top of Leinster club football’s roll of honour by carving out their own slice of history yesterday in Croke Park.
In joining Portlaoise and St Vincent’s on seven titles, they became the first to rack up three Leinster championships in a row, but while the final scoreline might have suggested otherwise, they were made to work for it.
It is hard not to feel some pity for Naas, the Kildare champions who Kilmacud have now beaten on the way to each of those three title wins.
It can be argued that it is a fair measure of their dominance in Leinster that they have won those three games by an aggregate of 23 points, hinting at a rivalry rooted only in familiarity.
However, the final margin yesterday did scant justice to the effort of the Kildare champions, who dialled up the heat on Kilmacud in the second half to the degree that Robbie Brennan’s team were held scoreless from play for the opening 30 minutes of the second half.
And yet Naas’s reward for that effort was scant as they were unable to eat into the two-point halftime deficit (0-9 to 0-7) with the game drifting into its final minute of regular time, as they trailed by 0-12 to 0-10.
If the three minutes of injury time skewed the scoreboard, it also showed up the essential difference between the two sides.
After his All-Star season last year, Shane Walsh struggled to find the form that has made him one of Gaelic football’s stand-out talents. But yesterday he showed his true class.
In those final three minutes, he ruthlessly took away what slim chance the Kildare men had of winning a first Leinster title.
First, after a typical line-breaking run from the excellent Dan O’Brien, he kicked over his team’s first point from play of the second half in the 60th minute.
Three minutes later, after veteran Rory O’Carroll capped a fine afternoon keeping the shackles on Naas danger man Darragh Kirwan, by kicking his first point of the season to ensure the win for Crokes, Walsh decorated the occasion with a superb goal.
As goalkeeper Luke Mullins rushed up field to support a desperate Naas attack, Killmacud turned the ball over and Walsh ran onto to it on the halfway line, not breaking his stride to chip it up into his hands, and racing forward, evading a diving rugby-like tackle by Eoin Doyle before rolling the ball into an empty net.
It took Walsh’s tally to 1-8 (1-3 from play). In truth, that moment of quality was out of context with a frantic second period in which the pressure from Naas saw the AllIreland champions struggle to find their rhythm.
But Naas could not turn that pressure into the scores they needed, although they looked set for a final-quarter surge when Paul McDermott steered over a point in the 49th minute to leave the minimum (011 to 0-10) between the teams.
But rather than being the start of something, it was their last shot on target. At the death, their misery was compounded when Alex Berine was shown a second yellow card deep in injury time.
The Naas wing-forward had come close to matching Walsh as the game’s outstanding player, providing the losers with a genuine cutting edge in the first half, registering three points from play. For all that, Naas spent most of the opening half playing catch-up, only getting their noses in front from Dermot Hannifin’s thirdminute point.
Once the hard-working Shane Horan put the Crokes ahead in the seventh minute, they always looked the more likely winners and when the Offaly player kicked his second point, the champions had moved their lead out to three (0-8 to 0-5). It may have looked easy for Crokes at that stage, but being forced to dig deep made it all the sweeter.
‘It was a huge battle. We knew we had to up our effort and our work rate and it was sweet to get over the line at the end,’ said Walsh afterwards.
Kilmacud croKes: D Higgins; R O’Carroll, T Clancy, D O’Brien; S Horan, A McGowan, M O’Leary; B Sheehy, C Dias (J Murphy 58); C O’Connor (D Dempsey 50), S Cunningham (L Ward 50), H Kenny (D Murphy ht); P Mannion, D Mullin (C Pearson 38), S Walsh. scorers: S Walsh 1-8 (0-5f); S Horan 0-2; C Dias, R O’Carroll, D Mullin, P Mannion (1f) 0-1 each. Naas: L Mullins; C Daly, B Byrne, M Maguire; P McDermott, E Doyle, E Prizeman (T Browne 51); P McDermott (K Cummins, 51), J Burke; A Beirne, S Hanafin, J McKevitt (S Cullen 60); C McCarthy, D Hanafin (N Aherne 58), D Kirwan. scorers: D Kirwan (2f), A Beirne 0-4 (1f) 0-4 each, P McDermott, D Hanafin 0-1 each.