No sheet was passed around the Cork dressing-room this past fortnight to make sure all answers to the inevitable three-in-a-row question carried a degree of sameness. Or, deflection, for that matter.
Manager Ger Manley insisted to this writer earlier in the week that three-in-a-row hasn’t once been mentioned in camp throughout a 2025 journey that has an hour left to run.
At the opposite end of the room to Manley is Hannah Looney, the midfielder openly talking about this group becoming a “generational team” ever before the back-to-back had been completed last August.
At Tuesday’s All-Ireland final media event in Croke Park, captain Meabh Cahalane admitted that the prospect of three-in-a-row is “definitely” there in the back of the mind.
“It is a huge opportunity. As a group, there is no point talking about three-in-a-row unless you actually go and do it. We know it is going to take everything and more to get over Galway.”
It is a strange quirk that for all the county’s dominance over the past half century, no Cork team has managed to win the O’Duffy Cup three years in succession.
The class of 1970-73 remain the last bunch of women in red to achieve this milestone, their dominance extending a step further to four-in-a-row when the Marie Costine-led side kept the party going with a one-point win over Antrim in 1973.
In the 52 years since, Cork’s All-Ireland total of 20 is just behind the combined total of Kilkenny, Tipperary, and Wexford which stands at 25 for the same period. But while these three counties have all achieved the coveted treble, the standard-bearers on Leeside have not been able to go beyond back-to-back.
Sunday is the eighth occasion in the past 52 years where a Cork team has chased three-in-a-row. All seven previous attempts were sunk.
Here’s who sunk them and how.
‘Shocker for Cork’ read the Examiner headline. Joan Gormley’s goal three minutes from time turned a two-point Cork lead into a one-point defeat.
Dramatic Dublin revenge for the final heartbreak of the previous two years. Mary O’Leary was responsible for the entire 1-9 total of the vanquished Rebels.
Kilkenny traveled to Ballinlough and took the champions on their home patch thanks to an Angela Downey hat-trick.
Sinéad Millea’s 60-yard free, in the third minute of injury-time, went all the way to the Cork net to move Kilkenny in front for the first time and move them also into the decider.
“Three players went up for the same ball and when that happens, no one is going to get it,” Cork boss Tom Nott said of the winning free.
Wexford centre-back Mary Lacey receiving player of the match was symbolic of a Model rearguard completely shutting down the Cork attack, held as they were to just three first-half points.
Cork half-forward Jennifer O’Leary likened the winning defence to a “solid brick wall”.
Two Síle Burns frees late in the drawn game had kept the three-in-a-row dream alive and earned Cork a second shot at securing a ninth consecutive final appearance. Cork never led the replay until the 53rd minute.
Aislinn Connolly and Brenda Hanney returned Galway in front. Gemma O’Connor’s equalising free from distance seven minutes into injury-time drifted wide.
A rousing third quarter performance – during which the Cats outscored their opponents by 1-4 to 0-1 – powered Kilkenny to a first All-Ireland in 22 years. Easily Cork’s worst final performance of the Paudie Murray era.
After the two previous All-Ireland finals had been blighted to the point of ruination by whistle-obsessed officials, Liz Dempsey stood aside at the Gaelic Grounds to allow Cork and Galway have at it on the physical front.
At the end of a most attritional hour, the Tribeswomen’s display of substance and steel delivered a first knockout championship win over Cork since 2010.