Cork 2-19 Clare 2-17: A second successive weekend of derring-do and high adventure in Thurles brought Cork another miraculous win in another epic game.
When it was done, Clare lay slain and sliced on the grass and Cork, with the cheers and singing ringing their ears, made their way to an oddly silent dressingroom. The defeat of Galway had been greeted with cheers and tears. Yesterday's heroics were more taxing. There was nothing left and the Everest that is Kilkenny looms in a fortnight's time.
This All-Ireland quarter-final did as much as last week's humdinger with Galway to redeem what has been a prosaic hurling season. Clare hurled with heart and a good deal of intelligence and twice, at least, must have assumed the game was theirs. This Cork side though are the men they couldn't hang and as the sun went down the gallows was still unused.
Cork were nine points down in the first half and looked spent. They recovered early in the second but slipped again to five points down as Clare readied themselves for the kill. And yet Cork located the scores and the passes and the guts and finished in epic style.
Some rivets popped along the way and Cork are not the machine they were of old. Diarmuid O'Sullivan is not the warrior force he once was and when after 50 minutes he was called ashore, having been subjected to hurling's equivalent of waterboarding for most of the game, he looked resigned to his fate.
As providence would have it the Rock's substitution involved a lot of shifted furniture, bringing John Gardiner back from the half-back line and so on. The man who came on, Kieran Murphy, had the duty of just pulling to the net with his first touch just two minutes later. That score brought Cork back to within two points with 15 minutes left. It was the momentum they required.
Cork said afterwards they had known if they could switch off Clare's access to goals they had enough points in them to win the game. They could hardly have legislated though for either goal.
Clare drew early nourishment from Barry Nugent's deft flick on off a Gerry Quinn free on the half hour, a score which turned Cork's discomfort into a crisis.
Cork recovered but midway through the second a more freakish disaster befell them. Seán Óg made a textbook dispossession of Diarmuid McMahon as he hurtled towards the Cork goal, the ball fell and bounced through Donal Óg Cusack's legs and rolled over the goal line briefly before hitting a post and being scraped out. The umpire had seen enough though and a goal was correctly awarded. It as the sort of kick to the abdomen from which Cork had no real right to recover.
Cork were drained by this latest adventure and will know Niall Gilligan and the rest of the Clare forwards asked questions of them yesterday that they weren't comfortable with. How indelicately might Kilkenny pose those same questions?
All should be taken though in the context of a tired team. Cork trained hard in the week leading up to their game with Dublin three weeks ago. They have played championship hurling for each of the past three weekends and some of their younger players played under-21 championship early this week. Yesterday they looked wrung out.
It took an age for them to come to grips with the tempo of the game. In the middle third of the field Clare just drove into every breaking ball as if their life depended on it. Cork stood and regarded the impertinence with distaste but no will to chastise it.
The game seemed to lurch away from Cork with alarming ease. Clare's first half tactic wasn't too much more evolved than their shoot-on-sight policy in the Munster final, but they hit the target slightly more often and realised that l Gilligan could run Diarmuid O'Sullivan wherever he wished.
After the break, things were different for a while but again fatigue looked as if it would beat Cork. Their redemption came through experience and a little transfusion of enthusiasm. Cathal Naughton cantered as usual into any opening space, Pa Cronin and Patrick Horgan came of age on the left side of attack.
Cork roll on. The do-or-die nature of these weekends has rekindled something. Two weeks to the next episode. Afterwards they looked like men who need every day of it.
CORK: D Óg Cusack; S O'Neill, D O'Sullivan, B Murphy; J Gardiner, R Curran, S Óg Ó hAilpín, T Kenny (0-1), J O'Connor (0-1), B O'Connor (0-7 three frees, one 65), N McCarthy (0-1), P Cronin (0-2), C Naughton (0-1), J Deane (0-1), P Horgan (0-3). Subs: T McCarthy (1-0) for N McCarthy (34 mins), K Murphy (1-0) for O'Sullivan (51), N Ronan (0-2) for Deane (64).
CLARE: P Brennan; P Vaughan, F lohan, G O' Grady; B Bugler, G Quinn (0-1, a free), P Donnellan (0-1), B O'Connell (0-1 sideline cut), C Lynch, T Carmody (0-2), D McMahon (1-1), J Clancy (0-2), T Griffin, N Gilligan (0-8 three frees and one 65), B Nugent (1-1). Subs: A Markham for Griffin (58 mins), F Lynch for Nugent (59), M Flaherty for Carmody (67 mins).
Referee: Dickie Murphy (Wexford).
