Mayo and Cork aim to let football do the talking

IT might been lost in the sporting bonanza in Galway on Sunday, but the Suzuki Ladies Football National League final will provide a lot of answers for Cork and Mayo.

For Mayo, of course, it will be a measure of how much the recent shirts and sponsors controversy has affected the team.

It wasn’t even a week ago that the All-Ireland champions, and torch-bearers of the women’s game, were ejected from all competition. Thankfully, sense prevailed, but the issue still burns.

“It was awful,” recalled Mayo captain Nuala O’Shea yesterday.

“I got a call at 1.30am to say we had been thrown out. I was just gobsmacked.

“The way we approached it, we just decided to keep going as if we were going to get back in.

“It was hard to make sense of it all, when all you want to do is play football. That is all the team wanted to do and the argument was about something as trivial as what kind of jerseys to wear.

“It was difficult to comprehend for the players.”

O’Shea, who took over the captaincy of the All-Ireland champions at the start of the year, says the management team did a good job of sheltering all the players from what was going on. “You heard rumblings, it was the big scandal in the county.

“But we were sheltered from it. Most of the girls live outside the county anyway, at college or whatever.

“There is only two members of the panel in Mayo and they are minor players. So, most of us were kept away from what was going on. It was more an issue for the county board.”

Despite being only 21, O’Shea is pretty much a veteran at this stage.

She is one of the seven remaining players who were on the ’99 Mayo side, then just 16 years of age and has been an integral part of the side that has brought ladies football to a higher level.

But, even though Mayo have dominated the All-Ireland series in the past five years, they have not won a league title since 2000. They are heavy favourites to redress that in Salthill, but what has been the reason for poor league form?

“I don’t know,” admitted O’Shea. “In the past, the league had been seen as a stepping-stone to the All-Ireland championship. And we have used it like that. But, the league has become much more competitive, the standard is improving all the time.

“This year, we took a rest after the All-Ireland and didn’t do any major training until March. The championship takes so much out of us, but after Kerry beat us, that was a wake-up call and we started putting in more effort after that.”

Effort which has brought them to Pearse Stadium and a final against Cork. The Munster side are surprise finalists, particularly given a poor start in the league, but O’Shea believes it is indicative of how the game is changing.

“It has definitely become more competitive,” says the 21-year old UCD physiotherapy student. “The standards are levelling out, you could see that last year with Dublin. I think this year will be the most competitive championship yet.”

Events in Pearse Stadium will indicate how further up the learning curve Cork have to go. That they have made a league final is testament to their resolve, but captain Juliette Murphy knows they face an uphill battle to beat the All-Ireland champions.

“This is an important game for us, to prove to ourselves that we can compete at this level,” said Murphy. “This is our first year at this level, so we are still learning.

Mayo beat Cork by five points early in the league. “The one thing that took some getting used to is the physicality of the games, we wouldn’t have been used to that, and I think that showed in our early games. We didn’t have much self-belief, that only came when we started winning.”

After a couple of defeats, Cork got on track.

“We have improved with every game. In the earlier rounds, we didn’t play up to scratch, but we picked it up together, it just took time for the team to come together collectively. Sunday should tell us where we are.”

Although the club scene has always been strong in Cork, the county team haven’t been among the bigger teams in the country. With Eamon Ryan on board, things are changing. Murphy says the team’s ambition this year is to come out of Munster, a tough ask with the likes of Kerry and Waterford about.

And the game’s profile isn’t exactly huge down south, either. The Cork ladies have yet to get a sponsor, and they will grace our television screens on Sunday without one.

The team have considered going on local radio to seek out a sponsor. A good performance against the All-Ireland champions may do more to help their cause.