Corofin reached their 16th provincial final after an entertaining win over Ballina Stephenites in Pearse Stadium last Saturday.
A score line of 0-16 to 0-12 in mid November shows that when two sides attempt to play football every supporter leaves happy after seeing what football is supposed to be. Ballina were chastised, and rightly so, for their defensive approach to the Mayo county final but to the surprise of everybody watching they pushed up and pressed high on Corofin even while playing against the gale force wind that was in Salthill.
Corofin, with the aid of the win raced into a four point lead thanks to frees from the evergreen Gary Sice, Dylan McHugh and Patrick Egan. Ballina were dependent on their free takers in the first half with all three of their scores coming from the placed ball, while Corofin followed up with an sweet strike from Sice with the outside of the left.
There were other points from McHugh and Egan with man of the match Jack McCabe also getting in on the action with two for himself. Ballin,a who were already without the services of county man Padraig O’Hora also lost Ger Cafferkey to injury before the break and trailed 0-9 to 0-3 at half time. Corofin lost both Bernard Power and Dylan Wall at the interval with former Galway minor and u20 keeper Oran Burke entering to make his senior championship debut.
Ballina needed a good start to the second half and scored early on from Evan Regan, only for Corofin to go up the other end of the field and get one from both Lundy and Sice. Ballina once again reduced the arrears to five points before McCabe struck a fabulous effort off his weaker left foot into the wind from a tight angle. Ballina finally started to make the wind count and further efforts from Frank and Jack Irwin along with a Ciaran Boland effort meant the traveling side trailed by just three points with 10 minutes to go.
Up stepped Corofin’s experience once again with Michael Lundy putting over his second point of the game before two driving runs from McCabe ended with him fisting the ball over the bar to leave the Galway champions five up with five to go.
Evan Regan answered with another free before Sice scored his fifth of the game and his side's 14th from play in the final minute. Mark Birrane and Conor McStay replied with efforts in injury time but the Ballina men could not force a goal and Corofin dealt well with the few high balls that were sent in.
Ross Mahon who had come on early in the second half caught one highball while Burke who had a composed display on his first outing came through a number of players to punch one clear. On a miserable day for football in Pearse Stadium, Corofin scored 16 points from 21 efforts and got 14 of them from play while Ballina were also quite efficient scoring 12 from just 16 efforts.
Corofin started showing some of the experience that they had been keeping in reserve up until now with both Mike Farragher and Michael Lundy having their influence felt from the start but the victors were still able to call upon Colin Brady and Daithi Burke to see out the game when needed.
Much has been made of Corofin’s young players coming through from last year's victorious u19 side but Corofin’s other subs on the day Oran Burke, Darragh Silke, Ross Mahon and Glenn McHugh are all just 24 years of age. Corofin will now face their old foes St. Brigid’s on December 3 in Hyde Park after the Roscommon side overturned Leitrim champions Mohill on Sunday winning 1-7 to 0-8.
