Clare rises in hurling final for the ages
An All-Ireland final of epic proportions sees Clare become champions, overcoming Cork on a score of 3-29 to 1-34 after extra time.
Chaos, exhilaration, enthralling entertainment – over 100 minutes of some of the wildest hurling culminated in Clare becoming All-Ireland hurling champions for a fifth time, over a favoured Cork team looking to end a near 20-year wait for gold.
It was a final for the ages. Some of the finest goals to grace such an occasion, a game that was tied at half-time, full-time, and half-time of extra-time. A match that went down to the wire and moments that will be replayed and analysed as turning points. On the surface of it all, Clare came out on top by the finest of margins and on the day are worthy champions. Cork, as they say, will be back.
The game was a canvas for the game-changers to do what they do best, rising to the occasion emphatically, particularly on the Clare side. Mark Rodgers emerged as one of the country’s best this season and delivered a man-of-the-match contending performance and a game-changing goal. Often maligned for not showing up in the big games, Tony Kelly put any doubts to bed that he is one of the finest hurlers the game has ever seen, bookending a career just how he had started, with an All-Ireland title and a marquee performance. It was this blend of youth and experience delivering on the big day that carried Clare over the line.
Kelly’s goal in the 50th minute will be remembered forever. Jinking through three Cork defenders having popped onto a pass from David Fitzgerald, he carried the ball towards goal, slaloming like Lionel Messi through a bewildered defence, masterfully lifted the ball over the final defender, rested it back on his hurley one more time for a split second, allowing him one last step towards goal, before tapping it past the goalkeeper. It was magic, exquisite, a goal only he would be capable of in such a huge moment to send Clare into the lead. A goal befitting of the occasion and a moment that will accompany Kelly for the rest of his life, the lasting memory of their 2024 success and the 2024 championship.
The madness of the game being it somehow bettered Robert Downey’s phenomenal goal early in the first-half, when he soared forward for Cork and buried the ball into the net with an atomic aplomb that sent Cork into raptures.
In terms of great championship seasons, it’s hard to know where this one stacks up just yet, but once the dust is settled it will be a memorable one. The theme heading into the year was Limerick’s drive for five All-Ireland titles in a row, a feat never achieved, and it curried a Limerick-against-the-world energy. The provincial championships went down to the wire and were by and large exciting to follow, highlighted by Cork’s victory over Limerick in Páirc Uí Chaoimh which, although mentioned quietly at the time, was a sign of times to come.
Cork’s repeat victory over Limerick in the semi-final, deadening their drive for five in its tracks, flipped the season on its axis and meant we would get a new champion, be it Clare who last climbed the mountain in 2013, or Cork who have been waiting since 2005. The neutrals rejoiced and for fans of those respective counties, the rush for tickets rarely more intense.
What we got in the final was a match that lived up to its billing. Pure anarchy, a shootout of immense, heart-attack inducing speed, sideline cuts going over the bar, the referee getting a bang to the head, controversy, chaos and a crowd that was at the lip of every seat in the stadium. In the end, Clare escaped and the scenes afterwards as Kelly, lifting the trophy as captain, acknowledged his manager Brian Lohan as a God of Clare – a God who had done it first as a player and now as a manager.
"In Clare, hurling is like a religion and Brian Lohan is like our God!"
The endurance of the players to continue past 70 minutes and into extra-time should be commended, because the pace, if anything, went up a notch. We were going to have a winner on the day and that was that, as they struck blow for blow like two heavyweights in the middle of the ring. When Robbie O’Flynn broke through with an opportunity to jab for a point or go for a match-winning knockout punch with a goal, he failed to land the big punch and Clare surged, sensing a breakthrough.
Hurling purists will put this game on a pedestal, a great advertisement for a game that is often lamented as not being truly appreciated enough by the wider world, not least in some quadrants of its own country. The game was broadcasted across Britain for the first time and the reaction from those watching the sport of hurling for the first time, wondering what on earth these crazy Irish guys were doing running around at a million miles an hour with lengths of timber in their hands, will be cut and pasted for clickbait and the validation many need that this game is ours and better than anyone else’s, that everyone else on God’s green earth is missing out on something special.
After yesterday’s spectacle, that’s hard to argue.