THE titles keep on coming for the Cork Vikings Australian Rules women’s football side and they won another in Paris recently.

Last September they won the AFL Ireland Premiership against the Ulster Kookaburras, making them back-to-back Irish Champions and with it a chance to compete in the AFL Europe Champions League in Paris.

Having won the competition outright the year beforehand in Amsterdam, they arrived in Paris looking to defend their European title against the best clubs on the continent.

The Vikings team boast a strong contingent of the Banshees, the Irish women’s team who are reigning European champions. 

The Irish players from the Cork team include Annie Walsh, Abby Noonan, Caroline Condon, Ciara Corbett, Maria Quirke, Marie Keating, Sorcha Herlihy, Shannon Stevenson, and Sarah O’Donovan.

The tournament took place at Parc du Tremblay in Paris and consisted of four group games and if successful you then qualified for the knock-out stages.

Their first game was against Sesvete Redlegs from Croatia, and the Cork side were always favourites to win this one.

Although it took a few minutes for the team to get into the game, the Vikings emerged with a strong win over the Croatian team on a scoreline of 7-7-49 to 0-2-2.

They didn’t have long to wait for their second game, this time taking on the Southwest Suns, from the host nation.

After their first win, the Vikings had to race across the park to another pitch to get ready for their next game. Although they had just played a full game, the Vikings were warmed up and on a roll.

They beat the first of the two French teams they would play without conceding a single point, as it ended 8-1-49 to 0-0-0.

Game three was against Scottish side the Edinburgh Bloods, the first of two meetings against them.

PHYSICAL

Although a tough and physical game, Vikings once again emerged victorious with a strong 18-point win, 4-4-28 to 1-4-10.

Their last group game was against another French side, the Northern Griffiths. Once again, the Vikings were in top form for this tie and kept their winning run going as they finished the group stages undefeated, winning this one by 9-4-58 to 1-0-6.

On to the semi-finals where they faced English side West London Wildcats. The Wildcats took the first scores of the game, and half time came with the Vikings up by just a goal.

However, the Vikings knew they had more to offer and pushed themselves to put on an impressive display in the second half, scoring five goals without conceding a single point to the Wildcats, as it ended 7-3-45 to 1-1-7.

And so the Cork side were into the final and in with a great chance of retaining their title.

But they knew it wasn’t gong to be easy as they faced the Edinburgh Bloods again.

The Bloods barely could get a touch of the ball, and each time the Vikings touched the ball, they scored. The Vikings managed to score eight goals and two behinds within in the first half, conceding one goal to the Bloods.

Although the second half became more of a battle with the Bloods scoring three consecutive goals, narrowing the lead, the Vikings managed to extend the gap once again by scoring three goals of their own.

The final was a truly dominant display of AFL by the Cork Vikings, showing the strength of the Cork team as they ran out winners by 11-2-68 to 4-0-24.

In an overall impressive team display more than half of the team scored at least one goal during the tournament: Shannon Stevenson (14), Annie Walsh (7), Ciara Corbett (6), Marie Keating (5), Rebecca Corbett (5), Maria Quirke (4), Caroline Condon (2), Blathnaid Wiseman (1), Abby Noonan (1), and Kate Jenkin (1) as the trophy remained on Leeside for another year.