Crokes impress to reach Croke Park

Paul Brennan was in Limerick to witness Dr Crokes finally win an All-Ireland Club semi-final and put themselves within one more win of club football’s Holy Grail - the Merrigan Cup

WE’VE said it before and we say it again: the first round of the National League and the All-Ireland Club Championship semi-finals are the most difficult to forecast. Both take place in February after the competing teams have been idle for months. In the case of the Club Championship it’s not as long as the county teams have been on hiatus, but on the other hand there’s a great element of the unknown about the club games.

Looking ahead to Kerry’s recent matches against Donegal and then Mayo, at least there is a fairly overt familiarity with the personnel involved. Not so with the Club Championship semi-finals. Sure, here in Kerry we know all about Dr Crokes, but Corofin? A couple of television views of their Connacht Championship matches and a cursory chat with someone in the know in Galway to glean a few facts. We dare say the Dr Crokes management wouldn’t have been armed with a whole lot more information.

We opted, in our preview, for Corofin to prevail based on little more than some of the quality players they have in their team, they way they dispatched St Brigids in the Connacht final and the sense that if it was a close contest coming down the stretch that their experience of being All-Ireland champions two years ago might stand to them better. We could just as easily have come down in Crokes’ favour to shade the result. After all, the Killarney team is laden with their own quality players and they cantered through their provincial final obliteration of The Nire. And despite three recent All-Ireland semi-final defeats an argument could have been made

that vital lessons would have been learned from those experiences and drawn upon to get them over the winning line in a close run endgame.

In any event, we suggested that were Crokes to “seize the early initiative and sow some doubt in Corofin’s minds they have every chance” and that’s exactly what the Kerry champions did. They seized the very early initiative - two points in the first minute -, sowed plenty of doubt and concern in their opponent’s and went on to reap a brilliant and fully deserved win.

Certainly, team selector Harry O’Neill was delighted with the result, with getting those semi-final hoodoos off this team’s back, of answering the doubters, but most of all with getting back to the All-Ireland final and looking to finally get his hands on the Andy Merrigan Cup.

“We were written off by practically everyone but we had a belief among ourselves inside in the camp,” O’Neill said in the afterglow of this nine-point win. “There was a lot written about our history in semi-finals and we just felt it wasn’t that our preparation was wrong or that anything else was wrong, we probably just didn’t perform those days, and whatever way we put pressure on ourselves. But we knew that if we came up here today and performed then we could do the business.

“In fairness to the guys they got the early scores. They got on top and they managed the game very well. And they were very clinical then in the second half. With forwards like we have they got one on one with their markers, they took them on, went for it and we got the scores,” O’Neill said, acknowledging that Gavin O’Shea’s 26th minute was a little stroke of good fortune that is needed. “You need those little things to go right for you. Was it an attempt at a point or did he mean it? With Gavin you wouldn’t know but it meant we were in a great position at half time. We stayed cool under pressure and our back line really put the clamps on their forwards.”

While Kieran O’Leary, Daithi Casey, Colm Cooper and O’Shea garnered most praise for their forward play, O’Neill was keen to highlight the contribution of the team’s rearguard, especially those hard working bodies in the middle third, where Corofin were regarded as being very strong.

“The middle third of the pitch is where you win games. We miss (Eoin) Brosnan but Stocky (Alan O’Sullivan), Ambrose (O’Donovan), (Johnny) Buckley and others were outstanding. We had looked at Corofin and identified how strong their midfield was.

The substitutes that Crokes brought in were also worthy of praise.

“Those lads are very disappointed they’re not starting,” O’Neill said. “We’re looking to manage each game. There may be a time when they do start. Jordan (Kiely) scored a goal with his first touch, Tony (Brosnan) a point. And we know what you’ll get from Micheal Burns. He’ll work hard for you all the time.”

And the ghosts of those three All-Ireland semi-final defeat? Well and truly banished now?

“If you don’t win one then those defeats will always be hanging over you. There was a lot made of the fact that we couldn’t get over this particular line and that we weren’t able for what was being thrown at us. It is brilliant to get over this one,” he conceded. “When you get into the last four you are playing against top notch teams. Crossmaglen caught us with their intensity in the second half in 2012, Ballymun too (2013).

“Today, we were ready for that. If you didn’t learn from three All-Ireland semi-final defeats then there’s something wrong. We learned. It is nice to have the monkey off our back. We were written off by practically everyone coming into this and we are delighted to be in an All-Ireland final.”

We were written off by practically everyone coming into this and we are delighted to be in an All-Ireland final Harry O’Neill Dr Crokes selector

Gavin O’Shea shoots to score Dr Croke’s first goal during the All-Ireland Club SFC semi-final against Corofin at the Gaelic Grounds in Limerick.