All guts, all glory, as champions take their bow

By Daragh Ó Conchúir at Croke Park
With Croke Park almost empty and just the sound of keypads being pressed by stubby fingers and seagulls feeding on scraps left by a record crowd of 33,419 people, the Cork players and management came back out onto the pitch to take photos with the O’Duffy Cup.

It was less manic than what had occurred after the presentation, and it was just them.

The players sang the chorus of that old Starship rock ballad.

“Nothing’s gonna stop us now,” they roared.

Had to be from the management’s playlist. And we thought Frank And Walters was a bit old for these players.

After All is a banger though.

The group had not stepped back into the tunnel five seconds when the heavens opened.

It was that sort of day for the Rebels.

Goals within seven minutes half-way through the second half from Saoirse McCarthy and Orlaith Cahalane had separated them from Galway and they needed all of it by the final whistle. But one point is as good as ten when there’s a trophy up for grabs.

It finished 2-14 to 0-19. Cork were Glen Dimplex All-Ireland senior camogie champions for the third time in four seasons.

Laura Hayes versus Carrie Dolan was like the unstoppable force against the immovable object. All day. They weren’t directly marking one another but they found each other. Often. It was fascinating.

Of course, apart from being so strong, they are consummately skilful players and so, they provided absolutely everything.

On this day, it was Hayes (above) who came out on top. What a difference a year makes.

“I get emotional thinking about it because, of course there were doubts this year,” said the former player of the year. “Like, I’m telling you now, we were in the trenches at the start of the year, and for a team that’s so used to getting to finals, I’ve never been so excited and grateful for the build-up, and I just wanted to go out there and have this team let the shackles off.

“And I don’t think we did in the first half. And we were sitting in the dressing room at half-time, and like we were not even out of breath, and we were like, ‘What are we fucking doing?’ Right? And we just came out in the second half, and that was a Cork performance.”

It looked like war.

“It always is with Galway. They brought it last year, and we probably weren’t ready for it, and we said we’re not going to get caught like that this year again, and we were so up for that game.”

Interestingly, she felt that with so many changes from last year, the hurt of losing last year’s final could not be used. Because it didn’t apply to half the panel.

But you are never going to want for a bit of motivation when St Finbarr’s finest is coach.

“We just spoke about this year. And Gemma O’Connor said to us in the first round (of the group stages) against Galway (which Cork won), she said, ‘People are questioning our identity. Is the Cork camogie empire falling?’ We built our own empire.”

Cork manager, Ger Manley (main photo) deserves phenomenal credit. It wasn’t just players, he lost. Lead coach, Liam Cronin departed for Limerick’s hurlers this year and helped them get back on the throne. Adrian O’Sullivan was taken on board by Waterford’s hurlers.

But here he was, with a rebuilt management team and camogie team, an All-Ireland winning manager for a second time, having been a coach with Matthew Twomey in 2023.

“Everybody did a job,” said Manley. “We lost some great players last year. You know, icons like the Mackeys and Laura Treacy; the two girls that went to Australia were huge losses. Hannah Looney, and Aoife Healy was in her prime, she’s still under 23. They all texted me this morning. I was talking to Laura Treacy during the week.

“Camogie is very tight-knit. I was involved in hurling teams most of my life… this is probably the best team I’ve coached. And tactically, they’re so good. Like, Donal O’Grady is one of our backroom team. Sean Crowley has been involved in winning All-Ireland teams. James Nyhan is involved in senior teams in Cork. Gemma O’Connor will be a brilliant coach. She is a brilliant coach.

“It is levelling out. It’s grand to say Cork and Galway are there all the time, but it’s up to the other counties to catch up.

“But when we’ve players like Millie coming up, they’re going to find it very hard.”

After watching the ferocity of what unfolded for around 70 minutes, to stand next to Millie Condon is a shock. She is diminutive. She was cleaved early on in proceedings (above)  but waved the medics away.

It is, she opines, a hazard of her trade, like an open-side flanker in rugby. Her stature helps in the tight confines, she argues – though a bit of muscle might be added to the frame in the coming years.

“I have to use my size,” Condon said, meaning her lack of it. “That’s my strength as well. Like I’m smaller than most, so that means I can do well in the rucks.

“I kind of take it as positive. I feel like I’ve what I’ve needed to get here, and I’ll get stronger now again for next year. We’ll keep building.”

Not sure, but we think she meant literally, as well as figuratively.

With Cork being doubted, inside and outside the county – and understandably so – it was the newbies that were being questioned. Again, Condon turned that into a positive rather than taking it personally.

“We took it as our ammunition, and we knew that everyone wrote us off, and we could kind of train away for seven weeks, and no one was thinking anything of it, and then we came out of the Championship, and I think we kind of shocked everyone with that good performance against Galway up in Galway.

“It wasn’t going right for us all year, but we trusted in ourselves. We knew it was a completely new team, so we needed a lot of building to get to where it was. But we just proved that we’re not a team in any transition.”

She praised the management.

“I remember when we lost against Antrim in the League. It was a fairly low point, but after the match they came in and they said that our empire has not fallen and it’s only going to be matter of time until we prove people wrong, which we’ve done.”

Did Gemma O’Connor say that?

“Yeah, Gemma O’Connor said that. Gemma O’Connor is a woman of very wise words.”

McCarthy (above), like her great friend Hayes, is a great of the modern game. We don’t recall her scoring too many goals off her right though?

“I don’t know. I think we were talking all the year about my right-hand side and how I never use it,” McCarthy joked. “But I think I didn’t even think in the moment. It was just get it away and oh, thank God it went in.

“I think a lot of people said we would never do it this year. Even people from Cork were saying it. We knew what we had, and we stuck to that, and here we are now, and we just couldn’t be happier.

“I actually can’t believe it.”

Antrim were comfortable winners of the intermediate decider, by 1-22 to 0-11 over Laois. They were always a senior side in intermediate clothing and against last year’s premier junior champions, who competed well until the second half, they were far too strong.

Róisín McCormick excelled with 1-11. When Antrim last won this in 2021, McCormick and Maeve Kelly had a whale of a time. Kelly has endured an injury nightmare in the meantime, and scoring three points from play back at Croke Park and considering senior fare next year, she was ecstatic.

“Five years ago, I was on a high coming off of Croke Park, and I thought my journey was just starting going into senior camogie. And it was. But a couple of months after, I got a foot injury, and I got back and I got an ACL,” Kelly explained

“There were times when I thought I’d never hurl again. And then when I got back I was struggling.

“Everyone’s journey is different, and I was hearing, ‘You’ll get back better,’ and you’re expecting it to just click but it doesn’t just happen like that. It really gets you down, but I really got down to it this year. I moved back home and I put a lot into county camogie. It takes a lot of a person, but now, it’s all worth it. The last five years were worth it and it shows, you should never give up.”

“I cannot wait for senior.”

Armagh had lost four premier junior finals at Croke Park since 2016. They did win one final, against Cavan in Kingspan Breffni, in 2020. Eimear Hayes, a doctor, missed that, so she has been listening to friendly jibes over the years about her being a hex.

The Hayes Hex and the Croke Park Hoodoo, are no more, after Armagh saw off Cavan once more but this time at HQ, by 0-17 to 0-15 in a cracker.

“It’s unbelievable,” smiled Hayes (celebrating above left with Gemma McCann). “Thank God. Look, it’s such an honour to play, in Croke Park, but to win on it is just unbelievable. We feel it’s high time, and we put in the hard work. We never stopped believing that this day would happen, and thank God we were here now.”

Ciara Geoghegan scored one of the best goals ever seen in Croke Park when they lost the 2016 decider and she was a Donnelly. She missed last year’s defeat to Laois having just given birth to her second child. So she came back this year to finish the job.

“I’m so proud of all those young girls,” said Geoghegan, her two children running around the famous sward.

“Obviously, we’ve been around, and we got so close and it’s been a long slog back. But I’m just so, so delighted for all those young girls because they are just sensational. And that’s why I was more than happy to come back when I got a phone call.”