In camogie's Cork-Galway rivalry, can the Barrs strike back?

Athenry reeled in St Finbarr's in the drawn All-Ireland final before Christmas - can the Blues get the job done on Saturday?

Sat, 03 Jan, 2026 - 07:44

Eoghan Cormican

The last act of the 2025 season. The opening sentence of 2026. Either the narrative holds, or the displaced push back.

That we even have an All-Ireland club final replay to write about is symptomatic of the game’s changed order over the past six months.

A camogie team coming up the road from Cork and failing to hold a six-point lead in an All-Ireland final just does not happen, even more so again when that six-point lead is held as late as the 55th minute. Cork camogie teams don’t falter or fade or facilitate comebacks from that position.

St Finbarr’s should have been no outlier in that department, not when they’ve six Cork seniors from last year, four more from the U23 panel, and others who’ve been to GAA HQ on All-Ireland final Sunday with the county’s intermediate side.

Skill and self-confidence have always been the hallmarks of Cork camogie. An unrivalled assuredness upstairs matched and backed up by actions on the field.

There have, of course, been teams and tactical approaches over the decades that succeeded in disturbing the county’s dominance, in temporarily shaking their trademark confidence.

Kilkenny owned the second half of the 1980s. Tipp took five All-Irelands in the six-year period from 1999-2004. A generational Wexford group lifted the O’Duffy Cup on four occasions between 2007-12.

The women in red pushed back each time. Authority reasserted and restored. The game’s constant force.

The latest approach to get under the skin and inside the head of Cork players and teams is Galway aggression. Physical, robust, hostile. Unashamedly in your face. The county’s newly established market-leading club is no different.

Athenry knew it would be futile to engage in a shootout with seven-in-a-row chasing Sarsfields on the afternoon of the county final. Instead, Joe Rabbitte’s charges turned the decider into a congested ground war. They forced turnovers, won breaks. The squeezed and suffocated.

Sarsfields posted final-day tallies of 1-17, 2-14, and 3-12 to land their three All-Ireland titles since the beginning of 2022. Athenry held them to 1-8 in a low-scoring and superbly executed grind.

They rinsed and repeated the dose in the subsequent All-Ireland semi-final against the only other side to edge Sarsfields in a knockout fixture over the past four years. Dicksboro raised four white flags in the opening five minutes. They were then limited to just six more across the remaining 55 minutes.

The similarities between club and county are uncanny. Galway now have their own hallmark and it is proving a harrying success.

Following her logic-defying player-of-the-match performance in last month’s drawn All-Ireland final, we watched back the 2021 Laochra Gael episode of Therese Maher.

It was most revealing how she perceived Cork during her own inter-county days and how that perception is now completely swapped.

“I remember how Cork were so, so physical,” she said of the 1998 All-Ireland final. Her take on the next occasion - 2008 - the two counties would meet on the concluding day was that “Cork came out and were so physical, they really hit us hard. That set the tone for the rest of the day.” Those sentiments are now being uttered by Cork in respect of the westerners. On the run into last month’s game, “physical”, “tight”, and “interested in keeping the scoring low” were descriptions thrown out by one Barrs player when seeing no difference between the Athenry approach and that which thwarted Cork’s three-in-a-row bid in mid-August.

The latter one-point defeat continued an annus horribilis for Cork camogie. Second best in the U16, minor, U23, and senior All-Ireland finals. Outthought and outfought by the maroon in three of them. Throw in too Ballincollig's All-Ireland intermediate club final defeat.

The Barrs had a brilliant opportunity to halt the losing final run and fire a first warning shot up west ahead of 2026. They failed to finish the job. It’ll be 5.15pm today before we learn how that failure has impacted them.

Before Donal O'Rourke ever came to assist Pat Ryan and the Cork hurlers, he assisted Galway to 2021 All-Ireland camogie glory. Two years later, he spoke of how Galway boss Cathal Murray and his S&C lead Robbie Lane had “changed the way camogie teams prepared” and, in the process, “changed camogie forever”.

Power and physicality is Galway’s weapon. Athenry pull from the same playbook. Their ploy in Thurles will be to shut down the space around Orlaith Cahalane, Sorcha McCartan, Nicole Olden, and Keeva McCarthy.

Cork-Galway is camogie’s sole rivalry. Can Athenry spill 2025 maroon assertion into the New Year, or can the Barrs push back both for themselves and the bigger picture?