Ladies out of luck

LADIES OUT OF LUCK

Daniel Carey
Croke Park

IT wasn’t supposed to end like this. Mayo fans accustomed to seeing the green and red failing to fire on All-Ireland final day could have been forgiven for thinking it was déjà vu all over again. But at the biggest dances, the county’s lady footballers have always gone toe to toe with their opponents. Last Sunday against the reigning champions, Cork, they never found their rhythm.
“I don’t know what happened out there today,” said a bewildered Marcella Heffernan, as her team-mates trudged towards the bus that would take them to the CityWest.
“It wasn’t the lack of trying … It just didn’t go right, but we’re not a bad team. We trained awful hard all year. We trained since January, and we slogged four or five nights a week, and I just can’t put my finger on it.
“They got every break … you have to have luck to win an All-Ireland, and they certainly had that. But there’s a lot of heart in our team, and they’re going to come back stronger from this, but it’s a very lonely dressing room.”
Cork looked the ‘hungrier’ team on the day and had won most of the breaking ball, said the Hollymount woman, who was at a loss to explain how things had gone so wrong.
“We’re not that bad,” she said, and the poor nature of Mayo’s performance clearly rankled. She was undecided whether she would return for another crack at the Brendan Martin Cup, saying: “We’ll take a bit of rest first, and we’ll see what happens then”.
“I don’t think we did ourselves justice,” she added. “And you know, a lot of people will probably go back now and say we’re a one-man team. This team is not a one-person team – I mean, Cora [Staunton] will even say that herself.
“It certainly isn’t. And they [Cork] had her well marked. They had every one of us well marked, simple as that. But I can see the girls holding their heads high up after this. They’ll come back stronger than ever. And there is an All-Ireland left in them.”
After the game, Mayo captain, Chris Heffernan, announced her retirement to her team-mates but manager, Frank Browne, sounded like a man who had unfinished business. “Today is a setback, but we’ll pick ourselves up and have another go,” he said.