Cork U14 ladies footballers face Galway with All-Ireland title up for grabs

Cork U14 ladies footballers will take on Galway in the All-Ireland final at Nenagh Éire Óg GAA grounds next Sunday, June 8, at 3.30pm.

Galway are one of only two sides, the other being Clare, to beat Cork all season and the Rebels will be looking to reverse that result next weekend.

It will be a tough challenge but one that manager, Ioannis O’Connell, said they are well up for.

O’Connell is backed up by an experienced team that includes selectors Dylan Byrne, Martin Nagle, Mary Harrington, Cathal O’Callaghan, and John Callaghan.

Colin McTaggart is the goalkeeping coach and Miriam O’Connell is their FLO, with Grainne Desmond on physio duties.

It has been a long campaign to get to the All-Ireland final next weekend.

As these are very young players the fun element is very much encouraged so their first outing was a Munster blitz, where no scores are taken. This is to give the players a chance to see what competitive football is like at inter-county level.

However after that it starts to get more serious and in the second round-robin event they came second to Clare in the group of six.

That then meant they faced Clare in the Munster final in April, which took place at Brosna, Kerry, and the young Rebels won by 1-10 to 1-6.

The All-Ireland series is also run on a round-robin basis and in those games Cork took on Galway, Derry and Kildare.

They lost out to Galway by 3-5 to 2-4, before beating Derry on a scoreline of 7-8 to 0-2 and then Kildare, 4-3 to 0-3.

This meant they qualified for the All-Ireland quarter-final against Meath on May 10 at Portlaoise. Again Cork showed their skill levels to win by 3-11 to 0-8 and go through to the All-Ireland semi-final.

This was never going to be an easy game as they headed to take on St Brendan’s Park, Birr, to face Mayo, with a place in the final at stake.

Cork showed the talent in the squad as they defeated a good Mayo side by 5-8 to 1-7 to now take on Galway in the decider.