Across the 2025 season, the Cork hurlers lost three games.
The 16-point defeat to Limerick in the Munster SHC round-robin at TUS Gaelic Grounds in May was tough to take at the time, but it was quickly overtaken by events as a win over Waterford allowed Cork another crack at the Shannonsiders in the provincial final, which they won after a penalty shootout.
The other two losses, we scarcely need to say, were to Tipperary.
As well as Sunday’s chastening defeat in the All-Ireland final, there was the 2-22 to 1-21 reversal in the Division 1A of the Allianz HL at FBD Semple Stadium in Thurles back in February.
Given that the counties’ Munster SHC game at the same venue eight months previously had ended with Cork triumphing by 4-30 to 1-21 as Tipp exited the championship, it was scarcely surprising that Liam Cahill had targeted the league game as a chance for redemption.
“When the dates came out in the league fixtures for this tie here, behind the scenes, I would personally be always aiming towards Cork coming to Thurles again,” he said at the time.
“That you would start making sure that you are putting those building blocks in place that needed to happen and bringing a bit of enthusiasm back into what has to be Tipperary hurling.
“The energy tonight on the field feeding up into the stands and the stands down into the players, it was a lovely place to be and, please God, we’ll look forward to more days like that as we move forward with this exciting winning team.”
Cork manager Pat Ryan with Patrick Horgan and Alan Connolly in the final minutes on Sunday. Picture: Eddie O’Hare
Maybe those within the Tipp camp felt at the time that there was an All-Ireland in the team at the time; if they did, they were in the smallest of minorities.
By the end of April, when Cork had beaten Tipp twice at SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh – by 3-24 to 0-23 in the league final and then 4-27 to 0-24 in the championship – the February game looked the aberration, a four-point victory outweighed by an aggregation of 43 points in the other three matches. It all pointed to a particular outcome at Croke Park and not the one we witnessed.
Such is sport – if the favourites always won and the denouements were easily divined, there would be no interest.
With the 20-20 vision glasses on, we can ask the questions: should Eoin Downey have been taken off after being yellow-carded? Should Declan Dalton rather than Patrick Horgan have taken the free at the beginning of the second half when Cork could have moved seven ahead? Should it have been a Cork free out rather than a penalty and red card?
The answers are easily reached for but they don’t change anything and probably don’t make anyone feel too much better.
Where does this leave Cork? Are the players more scarred than last year? Surely. Are they able to bounce back? Definitely. Will they? That’s another question entirely, but there’s only one way to answer it and Tipp showed what can be done.