Football now, boxing later for Sharon McGing

Sharon boxes clever


Carnacon’s Sharon McGing had to make a hard choice to play in next Sunday’s final

Feature
Daniel Carey

WHEN the date of the All-Ireland Senior Ladies Club Football Final was moved, Sharon McGing had a choice to make. TG4 wanted the game played on December 5 rather than November 19. So two big events she’d had her eye on for months – one with Carnacon, the other the National Intermediate Boxing Championships – were suddenly on the same weekend. The Kinuary, Killawalla native had to pick one.
“It was a hard decision,” she told The Mayo News. “Football is my first love, and as a family, would be our first choice. But I’ve been training hard for the boxing for five or six months. I wanted to give 100 per cent to something. I didn’t want to go 50 with the boxing and 50 with football.”
So she opted for Carnacon, and has re-calibrated her boxing ambitions to focus on the National Novice Championships in January. Narrowly beaten in a National Senior final last March, the St Anne’s Boxing Club, Westport member may have another tilt at winning an elite belt should things go well in the New Year.
Training six or seven nights a week means there’s little time for a social life – “I wouldn’t know what that was!” she says with a laugh. But then sport has been a huge part of her life for almost two decades. The McGing name is synonymous with Carnacon – Sharon, her sisters Michelle and Aisling (tragically killed in a road accident in 2003) and their cousin Caroline have all worn the green and red. Sharon, Michelle and Cora Staunton played together at Community Games level in 1993 – Sharon wasn’t even nine years of age then, playing at under-14 level. But despite having won 11 county titles on the trot and chasing her fourth All-Ireland, motivation isn’t a problem.
“We’re still so hungry, because we know what victory is like, and we know how much it means as a club to win the All-Ireland,” the defender elaborates. We lost one [All-Ireland final] as well and we never want to have that feeling [of defeat again]. I think that’s what’s driving us the last year or two.”
Cora Staunton has led the charge, racking up phenomenal tallies in each of Carnacon’s five championship games. The journey began in Charlestown, when they saw off Kilmovee in the county final by 20 points despite a slow start and not playing that well. “That was our first game since the All-Ireland final last year as a proper team,” McGing explains by way of mitigation.
A hammering of Leitrim champions Cloone was followed by a major scare against Galway representatives Corofin. Still behind seven minutes into injury time, they ended up winning courtesy of a Staunton goal. It was a real scare, yet McGing, manager of Lifestyle Sports in Castlebar and Westport adds: “If you ask any of the girls, none of us could see ourselves losing it.”
They’ve made dream starts in their last two games, getting “a goal straight away in the Connacht final” against Roscommon standard-bearers St Brigid’s and “a point from the throw-in” against Leinster champs Timahoe in the All-Ireland semi-final.
The “never-say-die” attitude displayed against Corofin is something she hopes will stand to them in the final – “If we are down, we’d be confident we can come back”. That was something they managed in the 2008 All-Ireland final, against next Sunday’s opponents, Inch Rovers of Cork. Nine points down early in the second half, they picked themselves up and ultimately triumphed. They’d settle for a repeat of that in Banagher.