Cork ladies All-Ireland Final ‘hurt’ is misguided

IT seems the Cork women footballers were hurt and felt disrespected by some of the commentary before last Sunday’s All-Ireland Final, which apparently didn’t give the Rebels much chance of beating reigning champions Dublin. Team captain Ciara O’Sullivan said: “I don’t think anyone gave us any chance beforehand, and for people who train so hard all year, it was quite hurtful and somewhat disrespectful. We gave a good account of ourselves and can have no complaints.” For the record, Cork lost the game by five points. I can’t say I read every preview of the final or listened to every pre-match opinion aired on television or radio, but it would seem that the vast majority of pundits went for a Dublin win, and possibly a fairly comfortable one at that. The logic, it would seem, was based on the fact that Dublin were defending champions, were impressive right through the Championship, were the form team of the two finalists and that Cork are nothing like the team that dominated the Championship for a decade and more until that great team began to break up a few years ago. In other words people looked at the evidence, made a judgement call about how a match would play out, and made a prediction. And guess what? Everyone who tipped Dublin to win was correct. (By the by, The Corkman predicted a Cork win by two points, which shouldn’t have been interpreted as being disrespectful to the Dublin players.) It’s usual, if predictably boring, for a winning GAA team to shove it down the throats of “the people who wrote us off” and seek motivation in their quest to “silence the critics” and more power to them if that’s what they feel got them over the winning line. But it seemed somewhat strange for O’Sullivan and Cork manager Ephie Fitzgerald to hone in on the “disrespect” shown and “hurt” caused to the Cork footballers by people who simply decided that Dublin were the better of the two finalists and said as much. I didn’t hear much complaining from the Cork women when everyone was predicting that they would win All-Ireland final after final at their ease between 2005 and 2015.