Cork hurlers deliver their greatest performance in years to end Limerick's drive for five

Cork gave arguably their greatest performance in Croke Park this century as they ended Limerick's five in a row dreams with a devastating display of hurling in the third quarter of a scintillating All-Ireland hurling semi-final on Sunday.

If you catch a tiger by the tail; Don't fail.

Cork did not fail.

Limerick probably thought they had Cork's measure at half time when they outscored Cork by ten points to four after the Brian Hayes goal, but they would not have been expecting the relentless blitzkrieg that Cork unleashed at the start of the second half.

Darragh Fitzgibbon began the onslaught with a point almost directly from the throw in, and before you knew it Cork had turned a two point deficit into a six point lead.

Brian Hayes gave one of the great Croke Park displays on Sunday. He was Cork's Gearóid Hegarty out there, and there can be no greater compliment.

He scored 1-4, but that only tells half the story. He had the Limerick defence in the horrors under Patrick Collins’ excellent long restarts. 

Limerick tried pretty much everyone on the Barr’s man but he won every individual battle. 

He was also hungry for balls into the corner, as Cork gave an excellent demonstration of finding space all over the pitch.

The spread of Cork's scorers tells a tale in itself. Hayes with 1-4, Patrick Horgan with five points, Declan Dalton and Seamus Harnedy with four each, and Shane Barrett, Alan Connolly and Darragh Fitzgibbon all with three points.

That shows that Limerick failed to get a handle on any of the Cork attackers, bar Horgan, who had one of his quieter days.

The movement from the Cork attack in that second half was breathtaking. 

Alex Ferguson used to describe defenders getting ‘twisted blood’ from having to deal with Ryan Giggs. 

You could imagine that a number of Limerick defenders might be complaining of such an ailment in the aftermath of this defeat, as the Cork forward line just never stopped running.

This was all only possible because of the excellent delivery they were getting out the field.

Not only were the Cork defenders winning their individual battles but they were sending quality ball to their teammates inside.

There is this magical 30 point mark that Limerick always seem to hit in every game, which invariably is a winning total. 

They fell one short of that mark here, and ultimately two short of the 31 point total that Cork had declared down the other end.

An interesting observation is that Cork scored 28 points in both wins over Limerick this year. 

That is some amount of white flags raised against arguably the greatest defence in hurling history.

The clean sheet that Cork kept was arguably the winning of the game, and while the full and half back lines played their part, a special word has to go to Patrick Collins, who gave by far and away his best ever display in the Cork no. 1 jersey, and at the perfect time imaginable.

A lot of folk didn't even have Rob Downey in their ideal Cork team at the start of the year. 

He made a mockery of that notion with one of the most commanding centre back displays you could imagine.

The feeling beforehand was that we were either about to get a damp squib, like in 2021, or an all-time classic, as we got in 2018. 

It was hard to imagine anything in between. We got another classic, that will go down in the ages.

Cork needed to just stay alive for the first 45/50 minutes, and the brilliant start to the second half meant they did more than this, as we had the bizarre sight of this great Limerick team seeming to not know what to do, for once.

After the Brian Hayes goal in the 17th minute Limerick took over. They would go on to outscore Cork by ten points to four in the lead up to half time, as they turned it around to take a 0-16 to 1-11 lead at the break.

Cork had a goal disallowed, which would have given them a significant advantage at that juncture, but the 23rd minute point blank save by Patrick Collins from Seamus Flanagan prevented what would have been an extremely costly period for Cork's hopes.

Cork ended up capitalising with that spell binding second half display.

The Limerick five in a row aspirations may have died a death on Sunday but Cork achieved a five in a row of their own, by winning their fifth successive championship game, which is something they have not achieved since 2006.

Every Corkonian would give their left hand to stretch that run to six in a fortnight's time.