Rena heads for double delight in hectic season with Cork
Ultimately, it forced them to make the difficult choice of opting for just the one game and hurling always seemed to win out.
Over the last few months, a small dedicated group of girls in Cork have had to come face to face with similar demands. Five of them who were associated with the victorious camogie team two weeks ago are in line to emulate Teddy McCarthy's unique feat of 1990 by completing the 'double' in next Sunday's TG4 All-Ireland Ladies Football final.
Defender Rena Buckley is one of those and she's representative of the new breed of ladies footballers whose rapid progression through the under-age ranks have helped Cork make the breakthrough at senior level.
From Inniscarra, but a member of the all-conquering Donoughmore club, she has already won All-Ireland medals at U14, U16 and U18 level.
It's been a hectic season so far for the 18-year-old student, whose dual involvement has kept her away from club activity, and like many in the squad, she has had to balance her playing roles with her studies.
She had started a course in chemical engineering in CIT just a few days before she got the good news that she had got a place in UCD for a course in physiotherapy. Four days later, she had her All-Ireland camogie medal in her pocket.
"I went home for a few days after the final, but my mam and dad have been driving me up and down from Dublin. Still, I missed a few training sessions,'' she said.
"It was difficult enough combining the two games over the summer, but there are five of us and that makes it a lot easier. And the managers were very good. We trained at different times - usually football on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings, camogie on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. The clubs suffered, basically we were training with the county the whole time. That's what I was doing.''
And just like those Cork icons of three decades ago, she freely admitted that changing from the big ball back to the small ball always presented the greater difficulty.
"It's always harder going back to camogie. It's fierce important to have your eye in for hurling - and you have to be hurling the whole time to do that. With football, you can be training with camogie the week before and when you come back, sometimes you wouldn't even notice it.''
It's her third year on the football panel and her second with the camogie squad. Two years ago she was the Munster player of the year in football and she has also won a TG4 Allstar award.
Predictably, there are days when she feels tired, when the travel and the routine of training takes a toll. And she points out that this year she has encountered injuries for the first time. What sustains her is the enjoyment she gets from playing and the camaraderie developed through the groups.
"It's a great thing to go out every night and train with your county,'' she says. "And with me it's a family thing. My father [Tim] would be involved in camogie, I have a brother who plays football and hurling and a sister who plays camogie and football.''
Interestingly, she says that coming from the 'high' of their dramatic win over Mayo in the football semi-final assisted her and the other dual players in their preparation for the camogie final eight days later.
"It helped because you were very positive. It would have been disastrous to have lost the match and then had to train and prepare yourself for an All-Ireland final, knowing in the back of your mind that you were out of the championship in football,'' she explained.
"That would have been hugely disappointing. Instead, we went into the camogie final on a high note. It gave inspiration to the camogie team to go on and we were down a point with three or four minutes to go, similar to football.''
The two Cork teams also bonded in the sense that the Ladies Football team attended the camogie final en bloc. And afterwards, they had a run-out on the pitch in Croke Park. This year they have been coached by former Cork star Eamonn Ryan, whom Rena describes as a top-class manager.
"His football training and the experience he has in the game has inspired us. We all look up to him.''
While Cork defeated Galway in the League final earlier in the season, Rena says that the players regard that as history at this stage. "It was Cork's first national [senior] trophy ever, so naturally we wanted to win it. But we wouldn't take any notice of that match. Galway had a championship match the following week. I don't think they were totally focused.
"Galway have proved this year and last year how good they are. There's no doubt that we are up against a very strong team. They're experienced and we've never been here before. Last year was our first year winning a Munster championship and we're a young team.
"We're going to be confident going into it but they're going to be confident as well. They're not going to be afraid of us, for sure.''
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