Revenge not on agenda for Cats ahead of camogie decider

By Cliona Foley

Revenge for last year’s smash-and-grab defeat cannot be Kilkenny’s motivation for Sunday’s Liberty Insurance All-Ireland senior camogie final, according to their manager Ann Downey.

They face defending champions Cork for the third year in-a-row and their fourth final meeting in five years.

The scoreline reads Cork 3; Kilkenny 1 and the dramatic manner in which the Rebels snatched the O’Duffy Cup out of their grasp last year - with that late Gemma O’Connor boomer and Julia White’s wondrous late winner - has only added spice to a dish that already has multiple chilli signs beside it.

But Downey, whose return to management in 2016 coincided with Kilkenny finally breaking a 22-year senior duck, says they’ve had to exorcise last year’s traumatic defeat from their minds.

You can’t go out trying to win a match looking for revenge for the year before, that’s not the way it works,” she stresses. “You can’t change history, you just have to play what’s in front of you and move on.

A meeting at the start of the year, where Kilkenny sat down and collectively reviewed the match video, helped them draw a line under last year’s g loss.

“We just spoke about it and put it to bed,” Downey says. “You can’t have it in their minds, it was a new year and we needed to move on.”

Since then the sides have met again in the league final where Kilkenny held on narrowly to retain their third successive Division One title.

Last year’s 0-10 to 0-9 decider was the first goal-less final since 2009 and the lowest scoring since Cork beat Tipperary 0-12 to 0-4 in 2006.

Cork have markedly bucked that trend since; notching up a whopping 15 goals and 121 points in six championship matches, in stark contrast to Kilkenny’s 1-43 from five games.

The latter were in a tougher group which included Limerick, Waterford and Galway and also had a hard-fought semi-final against Galway (1-10 to 1-7) but Downey remains unapologetic about Kilkenny’s defensive bent.

Trust me I’d love to see more goals but we have to play to our strengths,” she says.

“Using ‘sweepers’ may be your perception of us but it wouldn’t be ours. You have to look at the opposition and see the calibre of players they have. Cork have great players so we’ll sit down and make a defensive plan. Whether that’ll include a ‘sweeper plan’ only time will tell.”

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