Inside Track: Sunday’s menu a mixture of winners and losers

Television sports viewers had lots to choose from on Sunday afternoon. I was among them. There was the All-Ireland hurling decider, the final round of the British Open, and....National Hunt racing from Newton Abbot.

Don’t tell anyone, but I devoted some of my time to the latter, me having taken a small wager. The first of my three selections came up in the 2.35, which meant I had to tune in when the other two were running.

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The interruptions did nothing to prevent me from taking in most of the hurling, and at the interval and full-time in the big game, switching to the golf.

For all the talk of the numbers that transcended on Portrush, estimated to be around 250,00 for the four days’ play, it didn’t compare with the 83,000 that turned up for Croke Park’s one-off. (Come to think of it, wasn’t the 66,000 for Louth’s Leinster final some crowd?)

Was Croker taken over by people travelling from the deep, deep South? It seemed like that whenever there was a wide shot of telly, a sea of Cork red, with only small pockets of Tipperary’s blue-and-gold to be seen.

And how the flag-waving Corkonians enjoyed the opening half, their side getting most points and then getting a huge boost through a Shane Barrett goal just before the change-over. Six points separated the sides as the players made it off the field.

Who could have scripted what happened in the second half? No-one, not even those who came up with the ‘Roy of the Rovers’ stories.

First there were points and then goals, the product of tenacious tackling and a short game – putting in passes rather that driving the sliotar as far as possible. It all came from Tipp.

Bamboozled Cork had nothing to match it. And as the game ran away from them, the team that had gone into the game as raging hot favourites learnt that misfortune seldom comes alone.

Bad enough to be conceding score after score, surrendering a decent half-time lead, Cork had a player sent off and then a penalty saved. It ended with a huge draught on the scoreboard.

Liken it as you will, a complete fade-out or a storming comeback, the second half was quite extraordinary. And what a triumph – and, you could say, a big change of fortune – it was for the youngest player on the winning team.

Darragh McCarthy, an underage star before taking his place among the big boys, was in danger of becoming the bad boy of hurling having incurred the wrath of referees at the beginning of the year.

On Sunday he was at his disciplined and sharpshooting best, claiming 1-13. He’s one for today and many tomorrows.

Time to get back to the golf. By now Scottie was on a victory parade, enjoying the fully-deserved adulation of the crowd as he made his way up the 18th.

He didn’t have to sink a 14-footer– the Claret Jug only needed to have his name etched on it, presented, kissed and then parcelled, ready to be transported across the Atlantic.

Newton Abbot looked like a deserted village compared to two majors’ settings. But it had its followers and winners, only one of which was not enough to stop me from throwing my docket into the waste paper basket.