Cork SFC final: Nemo Rangers weather late Finbarr’s storm to end three years of heartbreak

Cork Club SFC final: Nemo Rangers 1-19 St Finbarr’s 2-12

In the end, relief. No matter how much Nemo Rangers have won over the last 50 years, the gap between this title and their last will have felt like a hellish eternity. They had lost each of the last three county finals and no club in Cork had lost four in a row since the 1930s. Nemo didn’t make their reputation on that kind of history.

“It’s been a long four years,” said their captain Stephen Cronin in the opening line of his victory speech, and he repeated the same words in the closing line, as if they were stuck in his throat and he needed to spit them out.

He said afterwards that they had addressed the defeats of the last three years at the beginning of the season and then moved beyond them. But there was no way of knowing if that process had worked until the fracture was tested at breaking point.

Deep in the second half, that moment came. Nemo had led by six points at the break, and by eight points 12 minutes into the second half, but the Barrs reduced the deficit to a point with four minutes of stoppage time left. If there were hidden doubts waiting in ambush, now was the time. Instead, Nemo kicked the last three scores.

“There is huge relief,” said Cronin. “There was huge emotion. You could see it on the pitch. Jesus, I was struggling to speak lifting that cup. There is emotion to have lost the last three [finals], without even realising it, just that pent-up emotion. It’s great to be able to break that and enjoy it.”

While tens of thousands of pleasure seekers circulated the city trying to avoid anything that resembled jazz, 7,054 die-hards descended on Páirc Uí Chaoimh and were treated to a terrific final. Under the new rules, convulsive scoreboards have been the greatest gift to the game, and even though Nemo led by seven points in the first half and eight points later on, the game was never dead.

That was partly due to the wind that blew fiercely towards the City End in the first half but eased perceptibly as dusk fell. Nemo had first use of the wind and made it tell.

Against the elements, St Finbarr’s suffered on their own kick-out. They went long with 11 kicks in the first half and lost eight of them, three of which went over the sideline. From that platform, Nemo squeezed the Barrs.

After 15 minutes, Nemo were 0-7 to 0-0 ahead and were not flattered by their lead. St Finbarr’s corner back Sam Ryan deflected a ball off the line when a cross from Ross Corkery was only waiting for a Nemo touch, and they had valid claims for a penalty turned down after corner forward Bryan Hayes was floored inside the large parallelogram.

The Barrs, though, steadied themselves in the second quarter. William Buckley, one of four Barrs players who had lost the hurling final a week ago, stormed into the game. They had cut the deficit to three points when Nemo struck for a goal in first-half stoppage time.

Mark Cronin’s two-point attempt dropped short, but his brother Stephen recovered the ball near the small parallelogram and played a cute pass to Luke Horgan, who palmed the ball to the net.

Nemo must have been braced for a Barrs surge after the break but instead Nemo kicked on. When Briain Murphy kicked their second two-pointer, 12 minutes into the second half, they held a commanding lead, 1-13 to 0-8.

The Barrs comeback was ignited by Brian Hayes. The Cork hurler was switched from centre field to the edge of the square and he scored his team’s first goal after Mark Hill was stripped of the ball in a goalmouth scramble. Two minutes later, substitute Cillian Myers-Murray kicked a two-pointer and after that, nothing was certain.

Hayes was instrumental in the build-up to the Barrs’ second goal 11 minutes later, coolly finished by Jonathan Wigginton Barrett. When Myers-Murray scored a point in the next Barrs attack, there was just a point between the teams, 1-15 to 2-11, with three minutes of normal time remaining.

Everything that happened next was a test of Nemo’s nerve. Neither team had dominated centre field in the second half, but in the closing minutes Nemo won critical kick-out duels, on both sides of the ball. That was the final twist.

“You have to look back at what happened last year and the year before,” said Robbie O’Dwyer, the Nemo manager. “You just think, ‘are we going to get over the line at all?’. If we didn’t get over the line today, maybe there’d be more doubts creeping in. But that’s finished with now.”

St Finbarr’s: D Newman, S Ryan, D Quinn, E Dennehy (0-0-3), C Dennehy, C Doolan, C Scully, I Maguire (0-0-1), B Hayes (1-0-0), T Egan (0-1-1), W Buckley 0-0-2, L Hannigan 0-0-1, J Wigginton Barrett 1-0-2, R Barrett, S Sherlock. Subs: C Myers-Murray for Egan 39 mins, F Crowley for C Dennehy 48 mins, B O’Connell for Scully 60 mins.

Nemo Rangers: M A Martin, C Molloy, M Hill, K Histon, K O’Donovan, S Cronin, J Horgan, A O’Donovan (0-0-2), B Murphy (0-1-0), M Cronin (0-1-6, 0-5f), L Horgan (1-0-0), C Shalloe (0-0-1), R Corkery (0-0-2), R Dalton (0-0-3), B Hayes (0-0-1). Subs: N O’Shea for J Horgan 46 mins, C Horgan for Shalloe 49 mins, D O’Sullivan for L Horgan 55 mins.

Referee: David Murnane