Clodagh Quirke on recovering from three ACL injuries and Tipp's quest to return to All-Ireland stage
Clare's Ziyan Spillane battles Clodagh Quirke of Tipperary at Croke Park. Picture: INPHO/Tom O’Hanlon
Clodagh Quirke could be forgiven if she were sick of talking about ACLs and semi-finals, but as befitting a teacher, she is a patient soul.
Tipperary are perennial inhabitants of the penultimate phase of the Glen Dimplex All-Ireland Senior Camogie Championship and they play Cork at FBD Semple Stadium tomorrow (6pm, live on RTÉ2), but have not been in the final since losing to the Rebels in 2006.
Seven times in the last eight seasons they have been unable to break that glass ceiling. It is the nature of things that this is painted as a negative, as a litany of failure, and two one-point defeats, to Waterford in 2023 and Galway 12 months later, shows how close they were.
But in truth, it is a journey of improvement, from being nowhere near, to leading the chasing pack and incrementally closing what had been a monumental gap. In the process, giving hope to the likes of Waterford.
In only one of those eight semi-finals – against the Déise – would they have been favourites, and that would have been marginal. Every other time it was Galway, Cork or Kilkenny in the opposite corner.
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So they keep coming back for more. No one has come back as often, or from as much, as Quirke. Now 31, she joined the squad in 2011, with All-Ireland winners still in the dressing room. Only Nicole Walsh, who returned to the panel this year after giving birth to her second child, remains from that cohort of 15 years ago. Caoimhe Maher and Aoife McGrath joined the squad the following season.
The Clonoulty Rossmore totem made her first appearance of this season in the blue and gold in the Munster Championship against Limerick, 12 months after suffering her third ACL tear in the same competition.
After seeing some game time subsequently against Galway, she came on for Maher – herself sadly struck down by a torn ACL – in the first half of the quarter-final victory over Clare at Croke Park.
It is an astonishing display of resilience.
According to a survey by Project ACL, female athletes are eight times more likely than men to suffer torn cruciates, for countless reasons from biological, biomechanical and environmental. It is nothing that has really been tied down as research is at a relatively early stage. After all, high-performance female sport is in its infancy.
What has been notable, in camogie at least, is that that some are more susceptible than others and that many of those that have torn the ACL once, have done it again.
“It is so prevalent at the minute,” Quirke says of the cruciate curse in female sport – team sports especially. “In camogie, every year in every set-up, there’s always at least one, if not more. And then it’s the recurring ones. They say with women, maybe the hips are wider and that sort of stuff but it really is a pandemic.
"We’ve even had two lads in the last couple of weeks, including my brother Ciaran. But with the women, it seems non-stop.
“The last time I did it, people would be saying to you, 'You hardly will go back and play again.’ In my eyes, there was never a time that I wasn’t going to try, whether that be just playing club level or county. I was obviously going to try and get back. It is brilliant to be back playing and thankfully, so far, I haven’t really had any setbacks.
“Do you know what’s funny? I thought the last time when it happened, this was going to be the worst. You know, a third time? But the whole rehab process was definitely easier. You nearly know what you can and can’t do, so you end up just kind of ploughing on with it.
“The first time I did it, I was only after doing my Leaving Cert. Jeez, if I compared what I was doing back then to now, it would be night and day! The time after that was 2021, so it was more recent. But this time, you wouldn’t be as cautious about certain stuff. You know you can probably push yourself on a bit.”
Right knee, left knee, right knee. There is neither rhyme nor reason.
“It happened against Waterford in the Munster semi-final. The time before that was against Waterford too. So I might just avoid playing Waterford from now on.
“I had a quick turnaround this time, which helped. I got injured on the Sunday, and I had had an MRI on the Monday, and I was up in Santry on the Wednesday for a consultation, so it was quick.
"But I mean, at the end of the day, you just have to get on with it. There’s definitely worse things you could be dealt with. I think that’s kind of what you have to remember too.”
As a first cousin of the late Tipperary hurler, Dillon Quirke, who died suddenly at the age of 24 playing for Clonoulty in the county championship in 2022, she knows all about that sort of context.
Dillon’s memory is honoured most notably with the Dillon Quirke Foundation, set up to raise awareness of Sudden Adult Death Syndrome.
Maybe just important for family and friends is the DQ Number Eleven Syndicate that owns the racehorse, Femme Magnifique. Another first cousin, Cian Quirke rode the mare to victory in Killarney last Friday and the scenes in the winner’s enclosure were joyous and emotional.
“I had horses when I was younger and we did a bit of hunting and that sort of thing. I would watch the racing a good bit anyway. I couldn’t go to Killarney but it was great to see the mare win on TV. There’s the Quirkes and the Frydays, a lot of Dillon’s friends, a few of the Tipp hurlers and club hurlers. It’s a big syndicate set up so that they’d go to Limerick around Christmas time and festivals like that during the year, to remember Dillon and be an opportunity for everyone to meet up.”
Playing for Tipp remains a privilege the maths teacher in Cahir’s Coláiste Dún Iascaigh values highly and is willing to accept a supporting role this term, particularly with the new blood on board.
And there is no fatalism about the purported semi-final hoodoo.
“The mood is good. Training has been good, and getting the three weeks was nice. Some girls with niggles got time but there was a lot we wanted to work on ourselves.
“We were competitive against both Waterford and Cork (losing both by just three points including to the latter, tomorrow’s opponents at the same venue, FBD Semple Stadium). We’re just focusing on ourselves what we need to work on.
“I suppose for players who have been there for years, you just want to get to the final. And then the younger ones, they don’t know any different – they’d be aiming to for the final anyway! They don’t see any reason why not!
“But in every game, you’re trying to win it to get to the next step. I think winning a League and a Munster, beating Cork in a big match, and playing these teams and beating them in competitive matches, that gives us the belief that we might have been lacking in the first few semi-finals, when we might have been just happy to get there.
“That has definitely shifted in recent years, to where the question is, ‘Can we get a good performance?’ Because I think when we perform to our best, we definitely can be beating any of them.”
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