Cork 2-09 Longford 1-06
Cork’s greater strength in depth proved crucial at Glennon Brothers Pearse Park as Colm O’Neill and Paddy Kelly came off the Rebels’ bench to decisively turn the tide of this Round 3B qualifier in Cork’s favour.
The home side looked by far the better side in the first half and after Cork moved into an early 0-03 to 0-01 lead, Longford added 1-03 without reply in the 25 minutes before half time, their goal coming from a Brian Kavanagh penalty.
Colm O’Neill struck a fine goal to put Cork back in front in the 49th minute and the tie was settled when Kelly played a glorious pass into Ian Maguire for the game’s final green flag.
The standard of Longford’s play up to that point was such that the stage appeared to be set for yet another famous qualifier victory for the county, but Peadar Healy was in the happy position of being able to introduce two proven attackers of real quality in the shape of O’Neill and Kelly, and both men played a key role in securing the turnaround victory.
Both men combined to set up Mark Collins for the second half’s first score after four minutes and after Cork re-established their dominance to get back within a point, they hit the front when O’Neill shaped inside two defenders and placed a low shot underneath Paddy Collum to give his side a lead that they would never relinquish.
Kelly played his part by striking a fine point from play, earning two further frees and wrapping up the contest with ten minutes to play when he placed a magnificent 30 yard pass into the path of Ian Maguire, who duly sidestepped Collum to strike the game’s decisive score.
Longford visibly tired over the closing minutes and while they continued to defend manfully, not to mention benefiting from six bad second half wides from the Rebels, they never looked like making any impression up front and their only second half scores were a 50m strike from Kavanagh and a speculative punt from Michael Quinn that bounced over.
The contest had a very different complexion in the first half, when Longford performed exceptionally well in several phases of the game.
Cork full forward Peter Kelleher had been in exceptional form in the Championship up to now but he was brilliantly marshalled by Barry Gilleran, while at midfield Longford started poorly but gradually began to win a good share of primary possession against Maguire and Alan O’Connor.
A strong breeze that blew across the ground made scoring incredibly difficult at either end but while Longford marshalled the Cork attackers very well, at the other end of the ground Cork’s flat defensive line across the 45m line was exposed time and again by a well measured pass in behind their rather rigid shape.
Diarmuid Masterson, Donal McElligott and James McGivney all did particularly well in timing their runs and picking off lobbed passes, while it was one such break that allowed Darren Gallaghger to feed Robbie Smyth in front of goal ten minutes before half time.
Noel Galvin was deemed to have bundled over the Longford corner forward inside the large square and the one could have been forgiven for thinking that all 3,567 supporters in attendance were from Longford when the crowd erupted in response to Kavanagh’s accurate low finish from the penalty.
McGivney added a further point to push the lead out to four at half time, but little did Longford realise that there were a few heroes waiting on the Cork bench, poised to come on and deny their team yet another remarkable win.
Cork now go into Monday morning’s qualifier draw where they will be paired with either Dublin, Westmeath, Tyrone or Donegal.
Longford: P Collum; C Farrelly, B Gilleran, B O’Farrell; D McElligott, M Quinn (0-01), D Brady; M Brady, D Gallagher; D Masterson (0-01), B McKeon, J McGivney (0-01); R Smyth (0-02, 0-01 free), B Kavanagh (1-01, 1-00 pen), L Connerton.
Subs: M Hughes for Brady (45), P McGee for McKeon (54), D Reynolds for Connerton (62), B Farrell for Kavanagh (64), R Connor for Farrelly (64)
Cork: R Price; C O’Driscoll, E Cadogan, N Galvin; B O’Driscoll, J Loughrey (0-01), T Clancy; A O’Connor, I Maguire (1-00); M Collins (0-02), K O’Driscoll, M Hurley (0-01); D Goulding, P Kelleher, P Kerrigan (0-02, 0-01 free)
Subs: S Powter for B O’Driscoll (35+1), C O’Neill (1-01, 0-01 free) for Goulding (HT), P Kelly (0-01) for K O’Driscoll (HT), J O’Rourke (0-01) for Kelleher (57), R Deane for O’Connor (70), S Cronin for O’Neill (70+2 – b/c)
Referee: Barry Cassidy (Derry)
