Round-up: Electric Ireland MHC Preliminary Quarter-Finals

​Electric Ireland All-Ireland MHC preliminary quarter-finals

Cork 2-18 Wexford 2-15

Clare 3-17 Dublin 2-17

By Paul Keane

Munster duo Cork and Clare are through to the Electric Ireland All-Ireland MHC quarter-finals after a couple of battling wins in Thurles.

Cork, who finished third in the Munster group, had to come from behind against Wexford with 54th and 62nd minute goals from captain Eoin Considine and Sam McCarthy to seal the valuable win.

It was an impressive show of character from Cork who trailed by five points with just 10 minutes of normal time remaining in the first of today's double header of preliminary quarter-finals.

Cork led by 0-10 to 0-9 at the end of a tense first half in which the sides were level on five occasions.

Tadhg McCarthy, Bobby Power, Callum Coffey and Cormac Murphy all kept the scoreboard ticking over with Cork points.

But it was Wexford's Joey Tobin that provided the score of the half when he chopped over a sumptuous point from a sideline as early as the second minute.

Cork doubled their advantage after the restart but a 33rd minute Tobin goal, when his point attempt from a 65 somehow dropped into the net, changed the game.

Sean Kavanagh added three points in a row for Wexford, followed by a Jack Furlong score, and now Wexford held a commanding 1-13 to 0-11 lead.

Wexford created another goal chance in the 47th minute and while Byrne Kennedy couldn't convert, play was brought back for a free that Tobin slotted over.

Wexford retained a four-point lead with 53 minutes on the clock but were powerless to prevent that Cork surge that decided the game.

Considine netted for Cork, Murphy tied it at 1-15 to 1-15 with a 56th minute point and McCarthy then regained the lead for the southerners with another point.

It was all Cork now and a Dave Nolan point was followed by McCarthy's game-clinching goal two minutes into stoppage time.

Wexford responded with their second goal at the death though McCarthy had the final say with a 64th minute point.

Meanwhile, Clare, the defeated finalists in 2025, hit the net three times in the second half of their preliminary quarter-final win over Dublin.

Dublin were in a commanding position at half time in Thurles when they led by 1-8 to 0-10.

Derry Ware's goal for Dublin in one of the game's first attacks stood between the sides at the interval.

Clare finished second from bottom in the Munster round-robin and were desperate for a powerful second-half display to finally ignite their summer.

And they duly delivered it with two goals from Gearóid Madden and another from Ben Talty propelling the Banner through to the quarter-final against a beaten provincial finalist.

Dublin free-taker Richie Hession, who scored 1-12 overall, and Clare's Talty came alive in the third quarter with a series of points for their teams.

Then Talty nailed Clare's first goal from a free, followed by a flicked Madden goal after James O'Donnell's shot for the Munster side was blocked.

Dublin got it back to a two-point game with 53 minutes on the clock but Clare's third goal, again scored by Madden after a long free dropped short, went a long way towards sealing the win.

​Dublin, beaten by Kilkenny at the semi-final stage in Leinster, battled all the way to the and Hession gave them a glimmer of hope with a goal from a penalty in the third minute of stoppage time.

That left two points in it but Talty provided the insurance score, taking his personal tally to 1-9, to leave Clare three clear.