Cork ladies footballers face tough trip away to Armagh

Cork ladies footballers make the long trip to Armagh on Sunday in the third round of the Lidl Ladies National Football League.

They take on the home side at 1pm at St Patrick’s, Dromintee, in what will be a tough tie for the Rebels. Cork can travel in confident form after an impressive win over Galway last weekend, following on from their draw with Kildare in round one.

Those results see Cork sit second in the table, a position manager Joe Carroll said he would have been delighted with before a game was played.

“It's massive, it is very nice to be second in the table, and it's good for the confidence of the players,” said Carroll, but we have a long way to go yet, and we have a long trip up to Armagh the weekend.

“I suppose you could build yourself up and fall down very fast again, like you've seen it in some of the games last weekend.

“Meath were well beaten in their first match, and they put up a very strong performance in the second match, so there will be ebbs and flows in the league.

We will just have to take it on the chin when it doesn't go right for us, but look, we'll still be hopeful enough that we get a result in Armagh.”

That win over Galway was a massive confidence boost to this side, which is a young one overall, and learning a lot about Division 1.

“Yeah, hugely, because Galway beat us twice last year in the league final, and they beat us in the early round league game as well.

“They were also a bit unlucky not to go to the All-Ireland final because they could easily have beaten Dublin, so they're a very composed team, and they're more experienced than us, they have a lot more older players than we have.

“We are developing our team and our squad, do we know how our first 15 is? Probably not yet, it'll take a bit of time and might be close to the championship before we get a better idea of where we are at.”

Carroll knows you never get it easy against Armagh, home or away.

“They were very impressive against Kildare, they're very mobile and have some exceptional players. They have a new manager who was there before, so we're taking nothing for granted, we're going to get plenty of it up there.

“We have a few injuries, so we'll have to wait and see with a few of them closer to Sunday.”

BUSY

There was an added, but good one, for the players involved as UCC qualified for the Ashbourne Cup camogie final, also on Sunday. That means that players like Aoife Healy and Leah Hallihan will be playing with the college side, rather than with Cork as Carroll has to travel without two key players.

He said they are a huge loss to Cork, but there is no way he would stop them playing in an All-Ireland final like that.