WOMEN'S FOOTBALL ALL-IRELAND SENIOR CHAMPIONSHIP FINAL: MARY HANNIGANtalks to one of the Cork's most talented and important players – even if the 22-year-old doesn't quite realise it herself
WHEN THE final whistle blew in the 2004 All-Ireland camogie final, signalling Cork’s second defeat to Tipperary in as many years, Briege Corkery might have been forgiven for wondering if she’d ever leave Croke Park with a winner’s medal in her bag.
Three times she’d travelled to Dublin for All-Ireland finals, at junior and senior level, and three times she’d returned home to Coachford defeated, leaving her parents Michael and Kitty and her nine brothers and sisters needing to convince her that she’d come again.
She wasn’t even 18 yet when she suffered that third defeat, so she had all the time in the world – but try telling that to a broken-hearted teenager. It was, she admits, “hard to take”, but not enough to keep her down.
She didn’t conclude that the place was jinxed, nor did she believe it just wasn’t meant to be. “It wasn’t about Croke Park, it was whether we wanted it or not, whether we had the hunger to come back stronger and use those losses to drive us on,” she says.
As it proved, she and her county weren’t just hungry for success, they were ravenous. Since 2005 they’ve hardly stopped feasting on All-Ireland titles, winning four camogie and four football finals, only their defeat to Wexford in the 2007 camogie decider interrupting Cork’s recent domination of women’s Gaelic games.
Corkery featured in every one of those eight triumphs, leaving Michael and Kitty with the problem of finding room for all her medals and honours, among them the 2005 Irish Times Sportswoman of the Year award for her contribution to Cork’s double.
Tomorrow, then, with Cork going for a football five-in-a-row, Corkery will be seeking her ninth All-Ireland medal in just five years, the stadium long since a home from home. As manager Denise Cronin commented after last year’s camogie final, “each blade of grass in Croke Park knows her by name, and I think she covered them twice today”.
Her dual medal count, though, is not unparalleled. Lining out alongside her will be fellow dual players Rena Buckley and captain Mary O’Connor. Buckley, too, has already won eight senior medals while O’Connor has played in 10 victorious Cork teams, seven camogie and three football (she missed the 2007 football final through injury).
But what is remarkable about Corkery is, as she puts it herself, she’s “only 22 yet”. Suggest to her that such a roll of honour – never mind what she might yet achieve – earns her a place among the Irish sporting greats and she laughs. She welcomes such talk almost as much as she savours losing All-Ireland finals.
“I wouldn’t consider myself much of a sportsperson at all,” she says. “It’s a bit of craic for me, no more than that. People would think I’d be a fitness fanatic and mad, like, but I just enjoy it. I’d be the first one to go out on a Saturday night if I’d a chance. I just enjoy it for making friends and having the craic. That’s all.
“So when they talk about me like that, ah . . . I wouldn’t like it, but if they say it they say it and you just go along with them, you just agree,” she laughs. “But, no, that’s not the way I see it. And it’s never about any one player, it’s always about the team – you wouldn’t win any medals without them.”
Her discomfort with that class of talk is long-standing. At the 2005 Sportswoman of the Year awards she sat with her parents through the dinner, relaxed, wondering who might win the award. Jessica Kurten? Katie Taylor? Nina Carberry? As the envelope was opened by Minister Mary Hanafin, Corkery sat smiling, prepared to applaud the winner. The smile left her face when the announcement was made. She just didn’t see herself as Kurten, Taylor and Carberry’s equal. Still doesn’t.
“I’m not, honest. And I’m no role model, like them,” she laughs. “For me, it’s just about having a bit of fun with your friends, that’s all.”
And that’s how it started out.
“Playing in the garden at home, just for fun. I was the second youngest, so I’d be at my brothers’ and sisters’ hurling and football games all the time, so I suppose sport was the centre of everything for us.
“My teacher Gerard Coakley (at Rusheen National School) really started me off through camogie when I was in senior infants, and later (at St Mary’s Secondary School in Macroom) they were stuck for players when I was in first class so they asked my Mam if I could play.”
Being significantly younger and smaller than most of her opponents, in football and camogie, had its advantages.
“I remember playing in the Sciath na Scoil semi-final when my sister Katherine was captain. She was in sixth class and I was in first. I scored a goal in the semi-final by running through a big girl’s legs. I just ran under her and hit the ball in to the goal by accident, more than anything.
“I just enjoyed it, it was what I did out in the garden the whole time, a bit of craic. Gaelic football was my first love really, although I tried other sports too.
“Played a bit of soccer. And, well, basketball – although my first basketball match was nearly my last – I got sent off too many times for playing Gaelic football rules, so that was it really.”
Camogie and football, then, took over her life. She might have had some spare time for non-sporting living if she’d given up one or the other, but the thought never crossed her mind.
“Yeah, training sometimes five or six nights a week with your club and county, with maybe a couple of matches at the weekend, was always hard enough, but I saw it more like socialising with your friends, I was happy out.
“Usually, it works out grand, there’s great co-operation between the two. Last year was tough because we had the camogie semi-final on the Saturday and the football semi the next day, but two All-Ireland semi-finals are the same as two very hard training sessions put together – when you’re used to it you wouldn’t feel it. It was grand.
“And when you win you’d be on such a high it’d be Monday evening before you’d feel wrecked. Of course, you make sacrifices, you give up a lot of things other people might take for granted – there are no summer holidays, there’s no going away with the girls or the boyfriend or anything – but you’d never consider going away in the middle of the summer anyway, you know what choices you have to make. If you’re losing interest you’ll make the choice to go away.
“Otherwise, you’ll stay and get on with it, and when you win an All-Ireland it’s all that counts, it makes it all worthwhile.”
Now, though, wanderlust is getting the better of her, come November she’s off – for a while anyway. “At the start of the year it was the first time ever that I found it all difficult to get in to. I found going to training was a chore, whereas every other year I’d have just gone, done it and had the craic. I decided that if it feels this bad I just need a break from it.
“I said I’d take the year out and go travelling so, in November, myself and the boyfriend are heading away for a year. Thailand, New Zealand, Australia and finishing off in South America.
“I went to Vancouver for three months last year and I was half sorry I didn’t stay there longer, I don’t know what it was, but that’s kind of how I felt. But, yerra, I didn’t, it was grand. But I know myself that I have to do it now, and have no regrets over it.
“Some of my friends are saying that I’ll be home again for next year (for the football and camogie championships), but I don’t know – maybe I will, but I’d say I won’t be. It’s all pure spur of the moment, whatever happens happens.”
It’s too early, then, to say that tomorrow’s final will be her last – she is, after all, “only 22 yet”, she still has all the time in the world.
For now, she’s home in Cork, fitting work in with her camogie and football commitments. Until six months ago she worked with a traditional stone-wall builder, but “he just ran out of work, that’s the way it goes, he had to leave me go”.
Now she’s with Flannery Construction in Carrigtwohill, “out and about doing anything and everything, putting down paving and foundations for houses, stuff like that – I’m kind of used to hard work”.
The boss, Frankie Flannery, does all he can to free her up for her sport – his co-operation was welcomed by the coach of this year’s Cork camogie team . . . Frankie Flannery.
With the camogie won it’s football’s turn. Dublin are the opponents tomorrow.
“We’re taking absolutely nothing for granted. Dublin have some outstanding players and they’ve been putting in training something fierce, apparently.
“We’re very wary of them so we’re just going to have to put the heads down and not be complacent, or anything like that. I just think it will come down to luck on the day.”
A ninth senior All-Ireland medal to be won.
For not much of a sportsperson it’s a reasonable tally.
Briege Corkery
Age: 22.
Home: Coachford, Co Cork.
Clubs: St Valentine's (Gaelic football) and Cloughduv (camogie).
Senior All-Ireland titles: Four football (2005, 06, 07 08) and four camogie (2005, 06, 08 09).
All-Stars: Three football (2005, 07 08 – all in defence) and two camogie (2006 08 – first at centre forward, the second in midfield).
The Senior All-Ireland Medals
2005: With several underage All- Ireland medals already to her name, Corkery won her first senior All- Ireland title when Cork beat Tipp in camogie, avenging two successive final defeats by the same county.
A fortnight later she completed the double with Cork, when they beat Galway to win their first senior football title. Corkery fractured a rib in the first 10 minutes of the final, but played on. She was later named Irish TimesSportswoman of the Year.
2006: It was a double-double for Cork who successfully defended both their camogie and football titles, beating Tipperary again in the camogie and Armagh in the football.
2007: Cork's three-in-a-row hopes were ended by Wexford in the camogie final, but they beat Mayo in the football. Corkery was named footballer of the year.
2008: Another double, this time Galway the victims in camogie and Monaghan in the football. Corkery was named player of the match in the camogie final.
2009: Defeat of Kilkenny gave Corkery her eighth All-Ireland medal in five years. Tomorrow, she goes for five-in-a-row in the football.
