Anthony Daly: Things are bubbling up nicely in Cork now

I said to John that it was going to be an extremely tricky game, especially when it was going to be so hard for Sars to reproduce what they did against Ballygunner. They got nowhere near those levels on Sunday but it didn’t matter. This was all about getting the job done. And Sars got it done.

It wasn’t a classic All-Ireland semi-final by any stretch of the imagination but the winners never care about how the match looks – especially when the stakes are so high. I played in a classic All-Ireland semi-final in 1998, a replay we lost to Birr after extra-time, but it was zero consolation to any of us in Clarecastle. It still isn’t.

Both semis on Sunday were similar, with almost identical scorelines, both one-point wins. In such an open championship, where every side left felt they had a chance, this was always going to come down to the tightest of margins. And both games did.

Nothing summed that up more than the Jack O’Connor-Cormac O’Doherty incident. Many will argue that Jack should have been sent off but I don’t agree. I genuinely felt he was trying to hook O’Doherty but another referee would have viewed it otherwise. With Cormac having taken off his helmet to be attended to, he couldn’t come on to take the resultant free, which Jack Cassidy drove wide. That’s the kind of stuff that will haunt teams for years – decades even. That’s how much it means. That’s how much it hurts.

It will be even more agonising again for Slaughtneil considering how well Jack O’Connor played – because he was the difference between Sars winning and losing. The pain will be even more excruciating again when Mark McGuigan had the chance to win the game in the dying moments but he blazed his shot from close range over the bar.

Slaughtneil did take over in the middle of the second half, and looked primed to kick on, but that scoring lull after half-time really hurt them. They needed to keep the scoreboard ticking but they couldn’t. What will infuriate them even more is that they had the chances – they just couldn’t take them. Sars had some shocking wides too, but they got the scores when it really mattered. 

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It was a similar trend with Na Fianna, who played poorly in the first half, and who continued to give away silly frees throughout, but they still found a way to get the job done in the end.

Donal Burke and Brian Ryan had poor games. Tiernan Killeen could have got five or six points off Liam Rushe. In the first half, Loughrea were consistently getting great diagonal ball into Anthony Burns and Darren Shaughnessy but that supply completely dried up after the break.

Na Fianna just got a grip around the middle to stop that supply. As they kept chipping away, you could sense that Loughrea were losing their foothold in the match, gradually losing energy and momentum.

Na Fianna really showed too how much they have grown in the last year, having lost last year’s Leinster final by a point to O’Loughlin Gaels. That would have broken some teams but it has driven them on to a whole new level. They have Donal Burke back from last year but they were still able to get themselves over the line here when Donal was held to just one point from play. That’s a sign of a really mature side.

And still, both results could have been different, where this could just have easily been a Loughrea-Slaughtneil final. The scenes afterwards captured that perfectly, where the devastation amongst the Loughrea and Slaughtneil players was as striking as the joy and elation amongst the Sars and Na Fianna players and supporters.

Shane McGuigan has won football All-Stars and is one of the best footballers in the country but he was in tears, broken, inconsolable at the final whistle. It was that agonisingly close. At one stage in the second half, I actually thought that the game would be decided on penalties. Thank God it wasn’t. It’s bad enough for any lad to carry that pain after missing that late chance. With penalties, two or three lads would more than likely end up having to carry that load.

With Na Fianna and Sars having misfired, what might happen in the final? It could be a classic. I’d say that the bookies will go evens the pair, even if Na Fianna deserve to be marginal favourites.

This performance won’t be good enough for Sars in five weeks, but they’re there. It’s another huge boost for Cork hurling that they now have three clubs in All-Ireland finals. They had clubs in the Junior and Intermediate finals last year too, which Castlelyons and St Catherine’s lost to Kilkenny sides, but there is a different feeling to it all this time around. And Sars’ progress has really lifted and excited the mood around the county.

There is a nice bit bubbling in Cork. Big time.