Talented Cahalane feeling the benefit of focusing on camogie

Maebh Cahalane has finally cut her losses and downsized.

SOLE FOCUS: Maebh Cahalane has focused on camogie this year. Pic: Larry Cummins

It’s fair to predict that the demands on dual players in women’s Gaelic games must be coming close to breaking point when someone with the genetic and temperamental gifts of a Cahalane starts cutting her losses.

Maebh, the second oldest of the family of seven which is giving such remarkable service to the Blood and Bandage right now, has spent over a decade straddling the twin high wires of inter-county camogie and football but, like her brother Damien, has finally cut her losses and downsized.

“I decided to focus on camogie this year, I just found it challenging when it came to the big games last year,” the 27-year-old St Finbarr’s defender explains.

“You want to perform your best every time you go out but, when you’re doing both, it’s just not possible all the time, often because you’ll have played the day before.

“They’re very different games as well so hopefully it’s a good decision. I’ve definitely noticed a difference. You have more free time and better recovery.”

Appetite, work-rate, and commitment. If the Cahalanes had their own family GAA crest, that would surely be their motto.

Maebh’s decision to focus on just one code should be some help to parents Niall and Ailish whose uber-talented children have dragged them hither and tither for years.

Damien, 30, is the eldest, Maebh next, and then comes Conor (25), Grainne (24), Jack (20), Orlaith (19), and Kate (16).

Jack has already lined out for Cork in both codes while Orlaith won All-Ireland minor titles in camogie and football in 2022 and came off the bench in the senior camogie final.

Maebh reckons that the youngest siblings have benefitted from the family’s size.

“Orlaith came off the back of winning two All-Ireland minors so, while she’s come into the (Cork) seniors very young I felt she was able for it. She’s ahead of her years.

“Ever since she was small she could do anything with the ball and Jack is the same. They’re so good with their hands, probably because they’ve been playing with older people for so long.”

Dad may have won All-Ireland football medals at every level but they get just as much talent, she stresses, from her mum’s side of the family.

Current Cork football boss John Cleary is their uncle and his sister Nollaig, a nine-time football champion, is just as much of an inspiration and a barometer for them. “Every Saturday and Sunday my mum and dad would be on the road, going to some sort of match or training session.

“You think they’d be sick of it at this stage but I remember during covid they were cracking up. They didn’t know what to be doing with themselves!

“We’d all be fairly outgoing, all into sport and into school. Myself and Grainne are accountants, my brother Conor’s just finished Business Information Technology and Jack and Orlaith are looking to go teaching.

“We get the competitive side from Dad alright but you know we were never pushed to play. There was just so many of us that one or two of us would always go training with him. You either stood around on the sideline or you played.”

With both sets of grandparents from West Cork they also benefitted from a halcyon dual upbringing; playing their hurling in Togher while spending summers in Castlehaven where the boys still play their club football.

“‘Haven only had a boy’s team so we played with the boys up until U12. There was no ladies football in St Finbarrs until recently which is why we play with Eire Og.”

Her teenage sister is certainly the kind of exciting attacker that Cork camogie needs to break their recent final duck. She bagged 1-1 in this year’s Division One league final but they lost to Galway by four points, on top of losing the last two All-Ireland finals so there’s a score to settle in their tough Glen Dimplex Championship opener against the Tribeswomen on Saturday (5pm).

“Starting against Galway is a massive game. I think you can get caught up in results but if we just focus on getting a performance hopefully the results will come,” she reckons.

The Cahalanes will be turning the cars for Athenry again on Saturday as the extraordinary sporting journey and service to Cork continues.