COROFIN AT A CROSSROADS
Modest Silke accepts a win tomorrow will see Galway kingpins surpass Rangers as greatest of club teams
SOME day Corofin’s run will come to end and it’ll likely catch us all on the hop when it does. Why not tomorrow?
Kilcoo are a seasoned team and will be quietly confident having finally won Ulster and seen off Ballyboden, but this is their biggest test yet. Corofin always save their best for Croke Park, where they’ve yet to lose, and while it mightn’t be as comfortable as their recent finals, their class and experience will tell.
LIAM SILKE may be modest about it, but there’ll be no doubting Corofin’s place at the very top of the pile of great club teams should they win tomorrow.
No club has ever won three All-ireland titles in succession, with Portumna’s hurlers coming closest in 2010 when they fell at the final hurdle against Ballyhale Shamrocks.
Corofin are the first football team to reach the final with three-in-a-row at stake.
Silke defers to Crossmaglen Rangers when ranking the great club sides and there is merit in that argument – for now at least.
Cross won three in four years from 1997-2000 and claimed twoin-a-row once again in 2012 but three-in-a-row was something they never got this close to.
Moreover, another title for Corofin against Kilcoo tomorrow would be a fourth in six seasons.
“It’s very hard to say something like that in the moment,” says defender Silke when quizzed about just how special this team is. “It’ll only be looking back in say 10 or 20 years’ time where you can probably compare to other teams of the past.
“The likes of Crossmaglen, the achievements they’ve had, that’s going to be very hard to be beaten by any team.
“They had a lot longer period of domination than we’ve had so I think you have to wait and see how things pan out before you can compare properly.”
The club won their first All-ireland in 1998 and while they continued collecting county and provincial titles, it wasn’t until the emergence of the current generation that they became a real force at national level again.
Silke was one of six players that featured in the semi-final win over Nemo Rangers who won a county minor title in 2012.
“That minor age group, that was our first county championship. So you definitely wouldn’t have predicted it at that stage.
“But Kieran Molloy, Dylan Wall, they would have been two years below us so they wouldn’t have been playing with us coming up but they came in with us for that minor year.
“Those type of players, Dylan Mchugh, they made the difference. Once those two groups of good players came together we were successful, we won three or four under-21 championships with the same group. I suppose that minor was pivotal.”
Corofin are 2/7 to make history tomorrow but Silke pays Kilcoo due respect.
“They are a very fit, fast and intelligent team. I think as their championship has gone on they have progressively gotten better and developed more as a team.
“So they are going to be ready to be peaking for the game, we have to be very wary of that.”