Heartbreak for Portumna

Dara Bradleyin Croke Park

This one’s going to hurt for months to come. Ballyhale, no doubt, drowned the shamrock on St Patrick’s night after a comprehensive five-point defeat of defending champions Portumna at Croke Park yesterday, a win that brings them top of the club hurling roll of honour with five titles. For Portumna, well, they had to settle with drowning their sorrows.

Portumna’s pain won’t stem from having their chances of winning an historic third All-Ireland club title in a row quenched, though. Nor will the fact that their incredible 29 match unbeaten run was brought to a halt in the final.

What will really stick a stake through the hearts of this ‘band of brothers’ is the manner in which they relinquished the right to be crowned the undisputed greatest hurling – and probably football – club to ever grace Croke Park. That’s what was at stake and it will haunt the Portumna lads who never hurled like the way we know they can.

Portumna failed to show up and were a shadow of the team that clinically executed a win over the same opposition at the semi-final stage last year. Indeed, the reigning champions never got out of gear; never came anywhere close to hurling to their ability.

Bar Joe Canning’s outstanding performance and the battling displays of Ollie Canning and Eoin Lynch, both of whom tried hard, Portumna were second best. That’s what will give them nightmares. This team knows they are miles better than what they showed on Wednesday and that’s the killer.

They were beaten by a Ballyhale Shamrocks outfit that was hungry for revenge, and – despite battling to the death – they had no answer. Ballyhale did to Portumna what the South East Galway men were supposed to do to them. The Kilkenny men worked like dogs, hooked, blocked and tackled with a ferocity normally associated with Portumna and the Galway men just couldn’t cope. Ballyhale had a game plan and executed it to the letter. From the throw-in it was clear the Kilkenny men weren’t going to be bowled over as easily as they were in Thurles last year.

Instead they unceremoniously tore into Portumna from the word go. In contrast, unusually, the Portumna lads never settled and seemed completely rattled by the intensity Ballyhale brought to the game.

Nothing was going right for Portumna in the first half. Joe Canning tried for a goal a few minutes in – no doubt hoping for another goal blitz start – but he was denied by an expert save by James Connolly.Alan Cuddihy was cleaning up in the Ballyhale full-back line; Cha Fitzpatrick and Michael Fennelly were on top at midfield; and the half-forward line, in particular Henry Shefflin and TJ Reid looked a class apart.

Ballyhale got right in their faces. Battled harder for every ball. You could see the hurt of last year oozing out of them as the Killkenny men hunted in packs and hassled and harried for everything.

All of a sudden, with 15 minutes gone, Portumna found themselves 0-6 to 0-1 behind – a quarter of an hour gone and the match was passing Portumna by.

Of course the wonder boy Joe kept things ticking over – he scored points from all angles from placed balls – and amazingly, Portumna got to the dressing room, just six points in arrears. It was bad but not insurmountable.

When Portumna got back to within four points after upping the ante, there was a sense that they could pull it out of the fire. But then disaster struck – a mistake by ‘keeper Ivan Canning gift wrapped a goal for David Hoyne with 14 minutes remaining.

Around an hour and a half before throw-in, long before the first few fans took up their seats, the Croke Park announcer alerted the stewards over the PA system of the sound ‘ding-dong-ding’ that would ring out in the event of an emergency – the chime couldn’t be heard when the goal went in but it was certainly an emergency for Portumna, a painful sucker punch from which they never recovered as Ballyhale ploughed on for victory.

“It’s one of the toughest dressing rooms I’ve ever been in,” a visibly dejected Portumna midfielder, Eoin Lynch told Tribune Sport in the dressing room afterwards.

“It’s very disappointing but these things happen. We’ve had our disappointments before and we bounced back but this one will take a little time. We’ll have to reflect over the next few days, we’ll regroup because the age profile of this team is still young enough and when you have young lads like Joe Canning and Martin Dolphin coming through, the spirit and confidence they have, I’ve no doubt there will be good days ahead for Portumna. This is a tough one to take but we’ll reflect, we’ll take it in, we’ll learn from it and we’ll move on.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.