Cormican’s dual dedication just what the doctor ordered

Galway star aiming to get back to Croke Park following her camogie semi-final heartbreak

BEATEN semi-finalist – is there any worse place to finish? Sporting bridesmaids, at least, get to sit at the top table and enjoy the festivities and prestige of the big day.

Beaten semi-finalists are more like the still-friendly ‘ex’, invited to the wedding but pushed to the fringes to sit with a table of strangers, still nursing your own private heartache.

That was the mood in the Galway dressing room last Saturday after losing another hard-fought All-Ireland senior camogie semi-final to Kilkenny.

Among those devastated was Caitriona Cormican who has had to physically and psychologically recover in time for a senior football equivalent today. She is well used to such challenges.

Last season she juggled both sports for Galway (albeit intermediate camogie with senior football) while living in Newport, Co Mayo, not far from Achill Island. She is also a doctor. Last year was the compulsory rural leg of her two-year GP training which explains how found herself so far from home and inside enemy football lines, clocking up over a couple of hundred miles a week for her dual sporting commutes.

“It was an awful lot of driving but they loved their football up there so there was always good banter at lunchtime.”

This year she’s based in Galway city, on the final ‘urban leg’ of her medical speciality, a situation that has seen her persuaded, for the first time in years, to play both codes again at senior intercounty level. Playing your second All-Ireland semi-final in a week, and a sixth consecutive major championship game in as many weekends, might have some reaching for the sympathy card but not Cormican (above).

“Leaving Thurles last weekend the way I looked at it was that I was the lucky one,” she insists.

“The rest of the girls have to wait another 12 months now. The training that has to be done to get back to an All-Ireland semi-final is so huge but, in just seven days, I had a second chance!

“Two very professional setups” have helped her manage the heavy training load and she has largely avoided major match clashes. “There was just one weekend when we were playing Waterford in football on a Saturday and then Kilkenny next day. I felt I wouldn’t be able to play the two because of the risk of injury so I played the camogie and was on the bench for the football but wasn’t needed.”

Cormican is not the only dual jewel in the female inter-county scene. Cork still have several at senior level and Orla O’Dwyer (Tipperary) and Megan Thynne (Meath) are two more, but Cormican’s work and age-profile – she is 30 – adds complications.

“I probably would have been able to play two matches (in a row) when I was younger but lining out on a Saturday and Sunday, that is really tough and eventually will catch up on your body,” she says.

She does wonder though why O’Dwyer, who played camogie for Tipp last Saturday, had to line out for their footballers next day, given that the latter was a relegation play-off. “You run the risk of injuries playing at that intensity two days in a row. You’re not going to do two intense training sessions one day after the other. The body needs to recover.”

Just herself and Emer O’Flaherty survive from 2005 when the Tribeswomen last reached the football final. They won their only senior All-Ireland a year earlier and the St Gabriel’s star got her senior call-up three months later, when she was 17.

Now Galway are back as a force, the only side in the county to have beaten Dublin this year whom they face again today in a big treble-header at The Hyde.

That was a league group game, in Abbotstown, last March, which Galway won by two points. When they met in the league semi-final Dublin’s only lead was thanks to Nicole Owens’ lastminute goal which pipped them by a point. Since then Galway have not only beaten Mayo to retain their Connacht title but whipped them by five goals in the All-Ireland quarter-finals.

They suffered a similar souldestroying quarter-final defeat to Cork themselves last summer, the first serious blip for Stephen Glennon’s regenerated outfit.

“It was just one of those days,” Cormican muses. “I still can’t explain what happened.”

As for Dublin: “They are a great side and the reigning champions so it really does boil down to performing on the day.”

She’s already been to Jones’ Road for a ‘major’ this year.

“My final GP exams were in Croke Park in June so I was looking out on the pitch which was nice!” One more visit to the Field of Dreams would surely be just reward for Cormican’s longevity and dual dedication.