A soulless, spineless, ugly little runt of a game

Cork 0-16

Mayo 1-10 By Malachy Clerkin

A soulless, spineless, ugly little runt of a game to start off the Bank Holiday Monday matches. After Sunday’s mix of willpower and wizardry, this was always going to pale in comparison. Still, you’d have thought as cultured a pair as this could have strung together at least a few coherent sentences. You’d have been wrong.

Take one Colin Corkery point (to his credit, probably the score of the weekend), some excellent running and shooting from Brendan Jer O’Sullivan and the odd splash of brilliance by the Cork midfield out of the afternoon and you’d be left with nothing to take away from Croke Park but a sunburn. That Pat Holmes’s side managed to end up only three points away in the end says more about Cork’s inability to strangle than Mayo’s ability to battle. Take it Kerry will be rubbing their hands at the prospect of taking revenge for the Munster semi-final defeat.

The first half had little enough to recommend it, the second even less. Cork were well on top straight away, Nicholas Murphy and Graham Canty winning an unimaginable amount of possession and using it intelligently. As usual, Corkery was at the hub of most of their moves and as well as tacking on a steady flow of points, he brought in his team-mates beautifully at times. One 50-yard pass to Fion