Louise says ‘hurt and pain’ will drive Kingdom to finally gun down Rebels

The bookmakers are seldom wrong but their odds for Sunday’s All-Ireland Ladies final between Cork and Kerry must have caused many to take a second glance.

The Rebels are quoted at 1/8 with many firms whose business is to ensure their balance sheets still have a healthy look come 6pm on Sunday evening.

But you will find few down Kingdom way arguing against such a price ahead of their clash with the All-Ireland champions and the side that have set the benchmark in the code for almost a decade.

Louise Ní Mhuircheartaigh is one player who understands Cork’s stranglehold over the green and gold better than most.

“I have never beaten a Cork side since I started playing for Kerry at U14 level,” she said. “There are a good few of the girls who have never beaten Cork.

“There is a lot of hurt and pain driving us on to put the record straight on Sunday.

“But we must just make sure our heads are right, and its all about self-belief and belief in the team’s ability to win this, by working hard for each other and fighting for everything.

“When we put on the jersey, we are playing for Kerry; the people, our parishes, our clubs, our families and ourselves.

“We want to play the game not the occasion. It is every girl’s dream to play in Croke Park, and I think we will handle it as a team.

“We will be giving it our best shot to lower Cork’s colours on Sunday. It will not be easy, as Cork are a superb team.”

That they are. Need proof? Sunday’s showpiece is their seventh championship final in eight seasons.

And they collected a ninth successive Munster title with a 3-12 to 2-9 victory over the Kingdom at Páirc Uí Rinn earlier this year.

That defeat still rankles with 21-year-old UCC student Ni Mhuircheartaigh. “We always look at the championship as our priority and we did work hard but we failed to win Munster. We lost to Cork, after giving them a big first-half lead when, to be honest, we never performed. But once we hit the qualifiers, we knew our time had come and we started to play well and, three wins later, we find ourselves in the All-Ireland final.

“Our ambition at the start of the year was to go one step further than the previous two years, and reach the All-Ireland final, and now that we have achieved that, we are training hard and hoping that we can go all the way.”

Though 21, the An Ghaeltacht club star is one of the leaders of her side, scoring 0-11 against Westmeath in the qualifiers, converting a late free in the quarter-final win over Dublin and to fore in the semi-final against Galway.

“I started playing senior with Kerry when I was only 16, so I have five years’ experience and I am trying to improve my game all the time. My hero as I was growing up was Geraldine O’Shea, who played in Kerry’s last All-Ireland win in 1993, when she was only 16. If I could do half as well as she did I will be happy. I started kicking ball with my brother Colm [a Kerry minor in 2007] off the gable wall when I was only a child, and you had to be tough to survive. I always wanted to wear the green and gold of Kerry and I looked for inspiration to players like Dara O’Cinneide and Colm Cooper — both brilliant — and I try and learn from watching how they played the game, and model my free-taking on both. “There is added pressure when you are the free-taker, because if you lose a game by a point — you tend to look back and blame yourself, if you miss a free.

“I have learned to live with the pressure now I think.”