Until 2017 Doireann O’Sullivan would have been forgiven for believing that this All-Ireland-winning business is a cinch. Having come on to the Cork senior panel in 2012, when she was only in fifth year in school, her first five seasons with her county ended with an All-Ireland winner’s medal – the last three with victories over Dublin. Since then, though, the tables have turned and come Sunday, when the two counties square up in Croke Park, it will be Dublin going for a four-in-a-row.
“Yeah, they’re at the top of the hill now, we’re climbing the hill,” she says. “We were the team to beat for a while, we were the ones going for the four-in-a-rows and all that, and just so quickly Dublin turned it around. They’re the team to beat now.”
Not since 2004, when Galway beat Dublin in the final, has a county other than Cork or Dublin lifted the Brendan Martin Cup, a spell that saw Cork win a remarkable 11 titles in 12 years. If they raised the bar for the women’s game during that era, O’Sullivan believes Dublin have lifted it even higher in the last three years.
“Definitely, they’ve taken it to a whole new level, their men too – they’re ticking all the boxes: strength and conditioning, nutrition, tactics, they’re off the scales. Dublin are excellent footballers, but I think the thing that separates them from the rest of us is their athleticism. They are extremely fast and fit all over the pitch, they’ve taken strength and conditioning to a new level. If you run into one of the Dublin girls you know all about it. All counties, Mayo, Dublin, Donegal, Kerry, Waterford, Cork, we all have excellent footballers – but I think they’re out on their own in terms of pace, strength and the speed of their game. It’s our job to try close that gap and catch them.”
O’Sullivan succeeded her sister Ciara as Cork captain last year, Ciara having led the county to All-Ireland victory in 2015 and 2016, but Dublin put an end to their Championship run at the semi-final stage, having beaten them in the 2018 final.
“I think in both those games we actually panicked a small bit, hit the panic button very early on. That loss last year was hugely disappointing for us. We thought we ticked all the boxes and it just flopped on the day. But I think we’ve learned a lot since then. A lot of it is just about doing the simple things right, so that’s what we have to do, especially in the first 10 minutes. If we’re level or just a point or two down at the first water break, we’ll be happy, we’ll take it from there.
“We have a very young team, I think we’ve three or four girls in their late 20s and besides that we’ve a lot of students. Even though the timing of the venue change wasn’t ideal, we’re absolutely delighted that we got to play our semi-final in Croke Park. Eimear Kiely, our wing forward, and Erika O’Shea, our wing back, had never played there before. Just even seeing the dimensions of the pitch and all that, getting to play there without a crowd as well, was a real advantage.”
“Usually Dublin have the majority of the attendance, so I do think it is a benefit for us that there’ll be no crowd. And communication on the pitch is a lot easier too, I couldn’t believe how much easier it was against Galway – hearing the person beside you, hearing management, hearing those calls.”
While O’Sullivan is familiar with most of the Dublin players at this stage, she got to play alongside Noelle Healy last year when the 2017 Player of the Year joined Mourneabbey while working in Cork. By the time Healy returned to Dublin, she had helped the club win the All-Ireland title.
“The dedication and commitment she gave to Mourneabbey was incredible, given it’s not her home club,” says O’Sullivan. “We all just had huge respect for her, I don’t think she needed to do as much training or needed to give as much commitment because she was always going to start on our team, just with her talent and presence on the field. We all really got to like Noelle and she was a huge part of why we got over the line in 2019.
“Herself and Eimear Meaney from Mourneabbey could end up marking each other on Sunday weekend – Eimear plays corner back, and Noelle is usually inside in the full-forward line somewhere. The two girls have marked each other in club training, so that would be a strange one alright. It would be a match-up that could take on a life of its own.”
No more than the Dublin v Cork rivalry has taken on a life of its own, this their fifth All-Ireland final meeting in seven years. “They’re a hugely successful team, a formidable outfit – but we do believe that we can beat them,” says O’Sullivan. “The respect is always there between us, but I think it will probably go out the window when the ball is thrown in at half three next Sunday.”
