Despite all the pre-match hype, last Sunday’s Munster semi-final between Cork and Tipperary was a poor enough affair...

With just ten minutes to go the score was 1-12 all, a very low rate of scoring on a day that was ideal for hurling. Many will undoubtedly attribute Tipperary’s closing surge to their superior fitness and the disruption of Cork’s early-season preparations, but it may equally be due to failing Cork morale resulting from a series of terrible misses and the negative impact of changes in personnel in the Cork line-up early in the second half.

Cork will be wondering how they managed to lose this game. They dominated the early exchanges against a nervous-looking Tipperary and notched scores regularly to be 1-8 to 0-4 up after 23 minutes. Their first setback was the Eoin Kelly goal after 24 minutes. Fair dues to Kelly for getting it when it was desperately needed, but it should have been disallowed. Kelly charged at Brian Murphy and then took eleven steps before shooting. Indeed, when Kelly got a similar chance ten minutes later which Donal Óg Cusack saved, he took no less than 16 steps before getting his shot away.

Even after this, Cork kept creating the chances but suddenly their collective radar went completely askew. Pa Cronin had two bad wides and John Gardiner missed a straightforward 65 before half-time (by now Tipperary were also creating and missing scores). However, Cork really lost this game in the ten minutes after half-time, during which Paudie O’Sullivan had his penalty miss, Pa Cronin’s poor shot was easily stopped by Brendan Cummins and Cronin, Timmy McCarthy and John Gardiner all shot very bad wides.

There has been a lot of talk about Paudie O’Sullivan being the man designated to take the penalty, and indeed he looked very nervous, fidgetting with his hands and hurley before hitting a very poor shot that was easily saved by Cummins. An Moltóir wonders if hurling coaches give any attention to penalty taking at all. The standard format seems to be for the taker to lift the ball forward and hit it as hard as possible in the direction of the goal. However, when hurlers try to hit the ball as hard as possible, they frequently mishit or misdirect it (or both). Direction is probably as important as speed in the taking of penalties. The first principle is to keep the ball away from the goalkeeper, who is a specialist shot-stopper. Very few penalty takers seem to aim under the crossbar, which was Christy Ring’s standard ploy. Once the ball is hit head-high, there is less body mass to get in the way, it takes an extra split second for the players on the line to raise their hurleys, and even if they do get their hurleys to the ball, they are likely to deflect it over the bar for a score.

Cork did manage to get a couple of scores in the 47th and 48th minutes to go two points ahead, but then they had three further terrible misses from Cronin, Kenny and Ben O’Connor. However, they were still ahead after 59 minutes, as Tipperary weren’t even creating chances, but then Mícheál Webster scored a super point and earned the free which put them ahead, and after that Cork fell asunder.

It is hard to know what impact the substitution of Timmy McCarthy and Kevin Canty after 46 minutes had on Cork. McCarthy was having one of his better games in the red shirt and, while not everything worked out for him, he was still getting on the ball regularly and running at the Tipp defence. Canty was doing little enough, but at least he was making a nuisance of himself and getting the odd flick in here and there. His replacement, Niall McCarthy, didn’t play the ball once during his 22 minutes on the field.

Apart from their poor shooting and dubious substitutions, Cork’s cause was not helped by their tactical approach. Placing Cathal Naughton in midfield was a good ploy, and Naughton continued to make an important contribution even after Tipp belatedly sent the excellent Conor O’Brien out to track him. However, Cork’s running game repeatedly ended up in blind alleys, closed off by eager and mobile young Tipp players hunting in pairs. Cork’s alternative tactic was the long high ball into the square, a ploy which they tried 15 times during the course of the game, to little effect. The idea clearly was to exploit the ability to win high ball which Pa Cronin had demonstrated last year. However, as Cronin quickly found out, there is a hell of a difference between plucking the ball out of the sky in the open spaces on the wing and trying to do it on the edge of the Tipperary square. There is no better man to prevent his opponent from making clean fetches than Paul Curran, and the Tipp fullback once again did the needful last Sunday.

Tipperary, by contrast, avoided the high ball into the square for the first 45 minutes, opting instead to play the ball low or short to allow Lar Corbett and Eoin Kelly to come out and gather, a ploy that worked quite well for them (no more so than for Kelly’s goal). But once Webster was introduced, the game plan changed instantly, with Tipperary hitting in a stream of high balls – again, to great effect – in the last 25 minutes. One has to admire a team to be able to think on its feet like this in the midst of a white-hot championship tussle.

Tipperary will undoubtedly benefit from having survived a game they probably should have lost, but they still have key weaknesses in their setup. Three of their starting forwards – Seamus Butler, Ryan O’Dwyer and Willie Ryan – hardly hit a ball between them. And despite a couple of flashy interventions, James Woodlock provided little enough support for the outstanding Shane McGrath in midfield. The half-forward weaknesses which have undermined them for years remain, and their ability to win ball from their own puckouts is very low. Despite Pat Kerwick’s promising display off the bench, and Mícheál Webster’s ability to cause mayhem for 30 minutes or so, they do not appear to have the forward power required to go all the way.

Cork seem to have very similar problems. Like Tipp, they have an excellent defence, including two super corner backs in Shane O’Neill and Brian Murphy, and Seán Óg Ó hAilpín certainly showed last Sunday that there is still plenty of life left in the old dog yet. In midfield, Tom Kenny and Jerry O’Connor are still mopping up ball and moving it forward in vast quantities. Up front, however, things don’t look too good. They have been trying to bring in new blood, but a foreshortened league campaign hasn’t helped and you can only really test a new player’s mettle in championship fare. Kevin Canty wasn’t at the races last week but might still come good. Paudie O’Sullivan looked like he could be dangerous but Cork had no plan to get ball to him (unless they assumed that he would feed off Pa Cronin, which didn’t happen). Cronin will presumably be restored to the wing with Kieran Murphy going to the edge of the square which is his best position. Brian Corry also looked handy enough when he came on.

Cork need a few championship games to sort out who is up to it and who isn’t, and what are their best positions. However, their problem now is that they are very likely to be playing Waterford in the game after next (assuming they get the better of whichever losing Leinster semi-finalist they are put up against) – hardly the best time to be experimenting against their double conquerors from last year who themselves will have a big case to prove and will be driven on by the redoubtable Davy Fitzgerald.