Tallying the Cork championship minutes and scorers
Cork's Brian Hayes about to take a shot in Sunday's All-Ireland SHC semi-final against Galway at Croke Park. Picture: Inpho/James Lawlor
Cork will have one hurling All-Star – but it’s scarcely a spoiler alert to reveal that anything more than that is unlikely.
Last year, Brian Hayes was among four members of the beaten All-Ireland finalists to be honoured, having scored 5-8 from play across seven championship games – in just missing out in 2024, he landed 2-13 from eight matches.
This time around, the St Finbarr’s man finished with 5-20 as his game evolved even further – Sunday’s seven-point haul in the All-Ireland SHC semi-final defeat to Galway was the second time he had reached such a mark, having also managed it against Waterford. A hat-trick of goals against Offaly ensured that he matched his green-flag tally, too.
The pity from a Cork point of view was that Hayes was so far clear at the top of the charts in terms of scores from play: next was Shane Barrett with 2-18, while William Buckley had 0-19, despite not starting either of the games in the All-Ireland series.
Free-taker Alan Connolly had 0-42 from dead balls and 1-11 from play, while 0-11 of Darragh Fitzgibbon’s 0-16 was from play. Though he didn’t start in Munster, Alan Walsh finished with 3-1 to his name.
In total, Cork used 26 players in the championship, with debuts given to four players – Buckley, Barry Walsh, Alan Walsh and Hugh O’Connor. All of them started at different stages, with Cork having 20 starters in total.
Six of those – Patrick Collins, Niall O’Leary, Mark Coleman, Eoin Downey, Alan Connolly and Shane Barrett – started each of the seven, with Collins and O’Leary playing every minute.
If Cork were to get a second All-Star, O’Leary would surely have the strongest case, just ahead of Seán O’Donoghue and Coleman, but 11-point semi-final defeats tend to overshadow much of what went before.
Patrick Collins, Niall O’Leary; Mark Coleman (2-1, 2-0 penalties); Eoin Downey (0-3); Shane Barrett (2-18, 0-1 f); Alan Connolly (1-53, 0-40 f, 0-2 65); Seán O’Donoghue (0-1); Brian Hayes (5-20); Tim O’Mahony (0-8, 0-4 f, 0-3 65), Robert Downey (0-4); Tommy O’Connell (0-1); William Buckley (0-19, 0-1 f); Diarmid Healy (0-5); Damien Cahalane; Darragh Fitzgibbon (0-16, 0-5 f); Barry Walsh (0-5, 0-1 f); Alan Walsh (3-1); Hugh O’Connor (0-2): Cormac O’Brien; Ciarán Joyce; Robbie O’Flynn (0-1); Brian Roche; Ger Millerick; Séamus Harnedy (0-3); Shane Kingston (0-3); Pádraig Power.
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