All-Star nominations reflect Dublin's camogie rise

As All-Ireland champions, Cork will be expected to dominate the camogie All Stars tonight but there are other narratives looming just to the side of the obvious.

Dublin have two players nominated tonight, having only had three winners since the scheme’s inauguration in 2004 – Ciara Lucey, the evergreen Louise O’Hara and Eimear Brannigan.

Former Rebel player, Sarah O’Donovan has made a success of her move to the capital to be honoured and she is joined amongst the nominations by her St Vincent’s clubmate, Ali Maguire.

Maguire has been a member of the Dubs squad for eight years now and in that period, the 26-year-old school teacher has endured many tough days and heavy defeats.

There was the odd ray of hope but not being able to get the best players in the county to commit invariably led to the deflation of their dreams.

The county board struck gold at the end of last year when appointing former

Dublin U21 hurling coach, Shane O’Brien as manager. He brought former Dublin captain and minor hurling manager John Treacy and another erstwhile Blue, Shane Dalton with him, as well as ex-Dublin, Tipperary, Limerick and Wexford manager and coach, Michael O’Grady.

For good measure, former world number seven squash player, Derek Ryan combined roles in strength and conditioning, physio and mental preparation while Laura McCague – daughter of former GAA president Sean – also joined after two years as physio with the Louth senior footballers.

In short, it was a high performance set-up designed to raised standards and improve results. It was mission accomplished, with Maguire in the vanguard. In all, they won four games between league and championship, and drew one.

They only lost marginally to Wexford in the All-Ireland quarter-final, having had just two days to recover from their play-off win over Clare. There are regrets but it was largely positive.

“Over the past few years we haven’t fully had the best 30 or so girls available so that was maybe one of the reasons we haven’t competed as well in recent seasons as we would have liked to” says Maguire.

“In the year gone by, people made themselves available and it was a good set-up. I think the results showed that if we do have the best players available we can compete with the so-called top tier counties.

“At the start of the year we’d set our goals. Realistically, we were looking at the minimum of a semi-final. We didn’t get there in the end and we lost by three points to Wexford but listen, we’ll learn from it. It’s the first year we’ve competed really well.”

A star basketballer with Killester, who would most likely be an international player if Basketball Ireland could afford to field a senior team, Maguire will miss the beginning of the league as she completes her commitments on the boards.

She insists though, that it is time for Dublin camogie to have lofty goals and attain them, and will be leading the way once she returns to the fold around March.

“We’re finished now with the moral victories we’ve had to strive for over the last few years. The only victories that really matter are the results on the scoreboard. It’s a nice position to be in that we are at that stage. The semi-final will be our aim next year.”