GALWAY CAPTAIN SARAH Dervan said her team had considered what they would need to do if Cork land a big punch in the All-Ireland final, and agreed to be in total control of their reaction.
The time to put their response into action came in the 48th minute. The sides were level at the time as Katrina Mackey collected a pop pass from captain Linda Collins before smacking the ball into the roof of the Galway net to put Cork three clear.
Galway had always kept a length ahead up to this point, but now they were chasing the game inside the final quarter.
They came back with an emphatic answer to reclaim the title they lost last year, and capture their second senior All-Ireland crown in four years. Points from Ailish O’Reilly and Carrie Dolan helped ease them back into contention before grabbing a goal of their own after O’Reilly supplied possession to Siobhán McGrath to apply the finish.
Her sister Orlaith added the insurance scores, as she fired over two crucial points to see Galway through to full-time.
“You can only control how you react,” Dervan explains after the game.
“Years gone by we reacted in the wrong way and this year we said that no matter what Cork throw at us, we’re going to react the way we wanted to and we drove and got the next point and put a little bit of belief back in us.
“We dug really deep and every single one of those girls fought with their hearts, I’m just so delighted to be on the right side of it.”
Galway goalkeeper Sarah Healy also held similar feelings of confidence about her side’s ability to absorb a setback. She was certain of a Galway even in the seconds after seeing Mackey’s shot fizzing past her.
“Not really, no,” she replies when asked if any sense of worry crept in when Cork got the goal.
“I knew coming up we were going to win, I just had that feeling [of], ‘We are going to win today.’ So when they got the goal, I knew it. And then we went down and got a score, got another one. I was like, ‘We’re ok. We’re gonna come back and we’re gonna be ok, we’re gonna win it.’ And we did, thank God.”
Remarking on how much further this Galway can go in the future, Healy adds:
“We believe in our camp that we are a great team, we think of ourselves like that. From the loss of last year, we knew we were good enough to come back and we knew we’re a good team and the work that we do, we can win two, we can three.
“We’ve just got to believe that and push on. We have the players to do that. It’d be a shame if we didn’t but we did so thank God.”
Under manager Cathal Murray, Galway are enjoying a golden period of unprecedented success. Considering Galway only won their first senior All-Ireland back in 1996, the county’s recent burst of All-Ireland wins since Murray’s appointment in 2018.
Dervan says that the current management team have pushed Galway onto an “elite” level of performance.
“Robbie Lane has been exceptional, out S&C coach, Cathal always demands the best for us. We always get fed, we always get treated exactly the way any county hurling team would and I think that’s huge.
“He never let us down, he always fought for us. It’s an elite level now and I’m just so delighted to have such a massive backroom team that have huge experience and knowledge and it’s really because of them, that’s why we’re here.
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