Editorial: Final win needed for incredible season

Can Cork make 3 in a row? The team are refusing to talk it up and that’s their prerogative.

Whatever method they’ve chosen to deal with the pressure and expectation is absolutely fine.

Some teams prefer to embrace opportunity and aim for doing new things but each team should choose their own way.

And Cork’s way this season has to win. They’ve only lost one match all year, although that was against Galway in the league in what was a dead rubber as Cork had already qualified for the final.

Cork were at home that day but they wisely used their squad that day, as they had four wins out of four prior to that. They still topped the table and beat Galway well in the final.

Tipperary were third in the league phase but Cork still beat them by double scores, 1-12 to 0-7. In fact, all four of their wins were by double scores!

In their All-Ireland Senior Championship Group, the beatings were even greater. They won four from four with Tipperary finishing second on 3 wins.

They hammered Tipp by 3-21 to 1-9, nearly triple scores!

In the semi-finals they beat Waterford by 1-21 to 1-11 after not playing for awhile, which was referenced by Cork manager Ger Manley when he spoke to our GAA columnist Finbarr McCarthy. “The first half showed we hadn’t played for a month and still only a point behind having played against the wind, but the second half was excellent.”

Finbarr’s excellent full preview is on page 28 and includes interviews with Ger Manley, star back Libby Coppinger and All-Star defender Laura Treacy.

Galway, meanwhile, look the second best team in country. They beat Tipp convincingly in the semi-final on a score of 1-18 to 1-11.

They easily won their All-Ireland Senior Championship Group, although they didn’t show the same scoring power as Cork as former double All-Ireland winning captain Linda Mellerick points out on page 25.

She has some great advice for this Cork team having come close a number of times to winning three-in-a-row herself.

In this week’s paper we have a fantastic 8 page feature on the Cork team who are bidding for history.

We also talked to St Finbarr’s Chairperson Ken McCarthy about Cork captain Meabh Cahalane, who is hoping to go one better than her brother Damien who came on for the Cork hurlers in the All-Ireland final.

The final is on on Sunday at 5.15pm in Croke Park, which is a strange time.

If you’re not travelling to the game, be sure to get the Cork flags out and support our fantastic camogie team this Sunday.

Corcaigh abú!