'We know what to expect from Cork'

WINNING their first ever senior All-Ireland last year was always going to be a tough act to follow for the Galway Ladies football side. Just how hard they were to find out as spring turned to summer.

When they qualified for the league final against Cork at the end of April there was little indication that their season was about to trundle off the rails in spectacular fashion but that was exactly what happened.

Cork annihilated their opponents by 19 points that day in Limerick's Gaelic Grounds, and less than 10 days later Mayo dished out a seven-point defeat in the first match of the Connacht championship round robin series.

None of the panel had been under the illusion that they were in cruise control before, but that brace of defeats shook everyone by the lapels. Their next game against Roscommon was two weeks away and Galway used the breathing space to get their house in order.

One of the answers they came up with was that, as a panel, their thoughts were still lingering back to the previous September and not on what was needed to reach those heights again.

Annaghdown's Niamh Duggan said: "There was a sense of that for the league final when we lost to Cork. We were definitely living on last year a bit. Maybe that's understandable because winning it was a big deal back in Galway.

"It was like the men winning there's. There was so many functions, being dragged around here, there and everywhere. It was great for a while but you still have to do the training the year after."

There were other reasons behind their fall from grace too. As with the men's game, the All-Ireland finals in September have become a mere staging post in football's overcrowded calendar rather than the final destination to any particular season.

As well as her club and inter-county duties, Duggan was a mainstay on the UCD team that won the female equivalent of the Sigerson Cup - the O'Connor Cup - this season on a team managed by Laois forward Billy Sheehan.

Beating NUIG in the final in Belfast brought an end to that chapter in March but, with a degree in sports management to wade through as well, opportunities for relaxation have been few and far between.

College started back three weeks ago but the summer was spent on work experience in Croke Park. She probably knows the ground like the back of her hand now, but it's the day both she and her team-mates spent there 12 months ago that will stand to them most on Sunday.

Apart from their camogie players, Cork will be experiencing Croke Park match day and everything that entails for the first time. Galway, as Duggan said, will not be stepping into the unknown.

"It'll be very tight and I think the teams are better matched maybe than we were with Dublin in last's year final. Cork have had so much underage success now that they're being called the 'Dream Team'. We know a good bit about them. We know they'll be tough, especially after the league final.

"They've definitely maintained the very high level they were at for the league final and hopefully, through our training and the matches we've played since, we can reach that level ourselves. We'll need to.

"We feel that we still haven't played to our full potential yet. Some of our training sessions have been going extremely well but we seem to have been playing in patches in matches. It's hard to know why. The opposition has a lot to do with that obviously but we're just hoping that we can sort it out on Sunday," she said.