Q&A – Cork and Mourneabbey’s Ciara O’Sullivan

Ciara O'Sullivan won her seventh All-Ireland football medal in September when she captained Cork to a five-in-a-row and their 10th title in 11 years. Her sister Doireann also played in the final, while two more sisters, Róisín and Meabh, were substitutes. On Sunday, O'Sullivan, who works as an accountant with Deloitte, will hope to round off the year by helping Mourneabbey win their first senior All-Ireland club title when they take on Donaghmoyne of Monaghan at Parnell Park.

Not a bad sporting year? It's been a good one alright, if we could finish it off with a win on Sunday it'd be even better. Captaining Cork was amazing, when you're walking up those steps to get the cup it dawns on you that very few people get to do this. Previous captains had been icons in Cork ladies football, like Juliet [Murphy], Angela [Walsh], Briege [Corkery], so it was daunting in that respect but such a great honour.

But your club comes first. You're playing with people you've been with since under-12, we've had the same core bunch in Mourneabbey since then. Seven of us won the Junior All-Ireland in 2005 and the Intermediate in 2007, so it'd be special to get the third and biggest one.

That core group has stayed together a long time? I suppose being successful helps, it's much harder to leave something when you're enjoying success, you want more of it. It's the same with Cork. I find it fascinating that everyone asks us where we get the hunger to keep coming back every year – it takes way more hunger and drive to come back when you haven't been successful. The only hard part will be deciding when you're not coming back any more. It's addictive.

Women's football is getting stronger, but Cork keep on winning? It's exceptionally strong at the moment, a few years ago you'd maybe pick three counties that had a chance of winning the All-Ireland, now it would genuinely be six or seven. And you'd see in a lot of our finals, and the games leading up to them, we've only won by small enough margins.

An indication of your fitness levels too? It is, but Eamonn [Ryan] would be different to a lot of modern trainers in that we don't have an actual fitness programme, we'd never be in a gym or anything like that. He has no dietician, no psychologist, nothing like that, when all other teams do. But we trust him that he knows what he's doing and that's very easy to do given his record. He'd be of the mindset that if we do enough ball-work, as opposed to just running or being in a gym, we'll get fit that way.

Ninety per cent of training would be done with a ball. Our strength and conditioning training would be, for want of a better word, boxing each other for two minutes at the end of training, pushing and pulling each other.

So if anyone was passing by they'd think there was a bust-up? Yeah! It wouldn't look great.

Is your family rooted in football? Definitely. There are four girls in the family and we all play. All the way up my Dad would have coached us and my Mam was chairperson of the club. So we didn't have any option but to get involved. My Dad used to take us out from a very young age, he'd always make sure we could kick with both feet.

So now the All-Ireland final against Donaghmoyne? And they've been there before and won before, so they're going to be very tough, but we're hoping having been there last year [Mourneabbey lost to Donegal's Termon in the final] will stand to us. Up to last year we'd never won a senior county title before, so everything was new, every step further we took was a big surprise.

This year it's not as big a deal, so hopefully we'll be a little less nervous. We have a good team at the moment and we appreciate that, you never know how long it will last.

Special for the area? It is, and it's a small area, everyone is so supportive. It might be one of the few clubs where the girls get equally as much support and attention as the lads' teams do. There are buses going up on Sunday, the club and all the community are very good to us.

So, you'll finally have a rest after Sunday? And I'm going to Vegas for New Year's. It'll make up for all the lost socialising. Last year I booked holidays for October thinking we'd definitely be done with football by then – we'd never won the county before. I ended up having to come home from Lanzarote after three days.

The price of success? Yes! But worth paying.