James Masters ‘obsessed’ with new training role with Cork ladies football team

Former Cork attacker James Masters says he’s already “a bit obsessed” with his new role training the Cork ladies footballers.

The Nemo Rangers clubman had to take time off work to attend Sunday’s Lidl National League game between the Rebels and Tyrone, in which Cork notched up their first win of the season.

When he was asked to join Ephie Fitzgerald’s management team, Masters was careful to make sure he’d be able to match the commitment of the record-setting players before agreeing.

“Ephie asked me about three or four weeks ago and I took a week to decide,” recalls Masters.

“It’s a lot of commitment and I’m in the Garda as well, so there’s shift work involved. But I decided I would and I’m delighted really. I’m a bit obsessed at the moment.

“It’s different too. In your playing days you just turn up and play, whereas now you’re preparing stuff for training.

“But they’re a great bunch and it’s an easy transition when they’re so good.

“I know Eamonn (Ryan) a long time and he’s done wonders with them.

“Ephie will come in and do his own thing as well but obviously he’s got the Eamonn tradition there too.

“They’re all great ball players and if we can improve them in any way possible, we will.”

Masters played under the stewardship of Fitzgerald at Nemo, where they teamed up for a four-in-a- row of Cork senior football titles in the last decade.

Now they are charged with helping to extend the Cork ladies’ run of five consecutive All-Irelands.

“I was so nervous the first two training sessions, you know, coming into an environment that you’re not aware of,” says Masters.

“I trained the Nemo ladies for a while and I would’ve known a lot of them but I came in so nervous.

“I’ve settled in and I’ll get more involved as time goes on.

“We’ve a great backroom team that has been there for years and they know the run of things too, which is great, because if you’re not sure of things, they’ll tell you.”

For the moment, so, the adjustment is being smoothly managed.

“At the moment we’re only training on Wednesday nights, so I’m looking forward to when we can spend a bit more time with them.

“We’d Astro training for an hour last Wednesday night and it’s hard to do a lot because you want to get through certain things but you don’t have a whole lot of time.

“I suppose what I could bring is practising frees and stuff like that because — I don’t know is Valerie (Mulcahy) coming back — but if she is gone, we need someone to step up to taking frees.”

With or without Mulcahy’s decade-worth of All-Ireland medals and sublime skills, with Cork’s mix of youth and experience the foundation is there for another 10 years of success.