AIB All-Ireland Club JFC final
Arva (Cavan) 0-13 Listowel (Kerry) 0-10
IT will go down as the Ciaran Brady final, a club tour de force that was surely up there with anything he has ever delivered in the blue of Cavan.
They will talk too about the lion-heart performance of Brady’s midfield colleague Tristan Noack Hofmann, just as impressive given the six or so years the former Irish underage soccer international spent away from the game. We will almost certainly be hearing more from him in a Cavan jersey this year.
But spare a thought for full-back James Morris and the lesser heralded role he played in this win. With 38 minutes on the clock, and Arva still trailing by two points despite having started the second-half strongly, the number three came steaming out of nowhere to fling himself on the toe of Listowel’s Bryan Sweeney and prevent a score. It was at the opposite end of the Croke Park pitch to Conor Gormley’s famous block in 2003 but it was just as effective and stylistically similar.
Upon such moments are All-Ireland finals won and lost and Arva will pore over all those magic moments as they celebrate this landmark occasion.
They will be happy enough to skip to the second-half though whenever they throw on a rerun of the match because it wasn’t until then that they really got going.
Listowel, seeking to become the 12th Kerry club to win this title, led 0-7 to 0-4 at half-time and were playing all the football. Arva, meanwhile, looked nervy and unsure of themselves. Three of their five wides were poor and they had it all to do.
“There was a few choice words at half-time, there’s no doubt about that,” revealed Arva manager Finbarr O’Reilly. “We really wanted to push up hard on their kick-outs. They were getting out too easily. We weren’t finishing attacks out either and we put it clearly to them at half-time, we definitely raised the temperature with them a little bit. We said that it was now or never, we said, ‘We’re not playing well and we’re not performing. It was time to step up’ and that happened.”
They stepped up for sure with Brady leading the siege. He kicked the first point of the second-half and in the opening five minutes of the half, Arva created no less than five scoring chances. They still hadn’t shaken off their profligacy as Thomas Partington kicked a couple of wides and Noack Hofmann drilled a free off an upright but they were getting there.
That’s just about when James Morris pulled off that block. In the circumstances, and with everything that was at stake, it felt like a score in itself.
Arva ultimately dismantled the Listowel kick-out and drew level in scoring terms at 0-8 apiece in the 43rd minute before pushing on to lead, helped in no small part by the black card handed to Listowel’s Ger McCarthy in the 46th minute for a wild lunge at Noack Hofmann.
Listowel only managed a single point from open play in the second-half and slipped four behind in stoppage time.
There was drama at the death when midfielder Joe Joe Grimes, a former Cork senior, netted for Listowel only for play to be called back for a free in the buildup. Listowel manager Enda Murphy said it was the wrong call and queried the black card too but Arva wasted enough chances themselves – they kicked 12 wides - to legitimately claim that they were more than deserving winners.
“He was on everything,” Arva manager O’Reilly said of star man Brady. “He was in the middle of every turnover, he was breaking kick-outs, kicking scores. I don’t think we would have turned it around without him. Him and Tristan at midfield were absolutely vital, the energy and aggression, the character they all showed, it just trickled through to the rest of the team.”
Arva C O’Hara; C Madden, J Morris, D Maguire; T Partington, S Sheridan, F McAvinue; C Brady (0-4), T Noack Hofmann (0-2); J McCabe, B Donnelly, D Ellis; P Morris (0-3), C Sheridan, K Bouchier (0-4, 4f).
Subs C Stanley for Ellis 41, T Brady for C Sheridan 56, P Cassidy for P Morris 61.
Listowel C Keane; N Collins (0-1), J McElligott, C Pierse; E Browne, E Healy (0-1), M Kennedy; J Grimes, D Leahy; S Keane (0-2, 1f), G McCarthy, J McVeigh; C Mulvihill (0-2), B Sweeney, D Keane (0-3, 3f).
Subs D Lynch for Leahy h/t, S Tarrant (0-1, 1f) for D Keane 49, A O’Rourke for Sweeney 56, J Moriarty for McCarthy 56, C Holly for McVeigh 58.
Referee A Nolan (Wicklow).
