With league final place assured, Cork ladies footballers want to keep winning run going

Cork ladies footballers are in a great position ahead of their final Lidl Division 1 Football league tie against Dublin on Sunday.

The Rebels travel to the capital as they take on Dublin at Parnell Park, throw-in 2pm, with their spot in the league final already secured. They could go through the motions and save their energy for the league final, but this side don’t know how to do that.

At the very least they will want to try keep their unbeaten record intact and end the league round robin series on another high.

Considering they were the fancy of some to go straight back down to Division 2, it’s a huge achievement for Joe Carroll and his side to be where they are. Fittingly, they will face Galway in the league final, scheduled for Saturday, April 11, the same side they faced in the Division 2 decider last season.

Credit must go to both counties as the promoted ones to find themselves in this position and it shows they both were never too far off the mark.

In many ways, it’s a free shot for Cork but for Dublin, the All-Ireland champions, are staring down the barrel of relegation.

As the league goes into the final round any two from Armagh, Meath, Kerry, Kildare and Dublin could be relegated.

Aside from Cork and Galway the only other county whose status in the topflight is secure is Waterford.

But none of that is Cork’s concern, they will be concentrating on the task in hand and attempting to keep their winning run going before they face Galway in the final.

“Yes, we are hoping to keep the running run going more than anything else and we're very conscious of that,” said Carroll.

“We're also very conscious that we could put out a weakened team, but we're also aware of the other teams in the relegation battle, that we don't do that and when we come to pick the team, we will consider all that.”

On the flip side this is also an opportunity for Carroll and his management to get some game time into players that may not have had a lot so far, ones he will need come the championship in a few weeks.

“We have a few players that we have introduced and maybe they might haven’t had a lot of game time so hopefully we get more time into them.

“We'd have a few as well then in the back of our minds that have got very little to no game time and hopefully, we can introduce a few of them as well just to give them a taste to see how they get on with it.”

ADVANTAGE

But like all manager Carroll still knows there are areas they need to work on before the intensity goes up come the Munster and All-Ireland championships over the coming months.

“I think we'd be, as a management, are still looking maybe for a 50- to 55-minute performance rather than some of the stuff we're doing. Even last Saturday against Meath we dropped off a small bit coming towards the end and left them back into it.

“We need to be careful against that in the championship against better teams because they'll catch you.

“For now we aren’t looking beyond the Dublin game. We're going up there to try and win the match and we won’t be taking the foot off the pedal in any way.

“So any of the other countries needn't be worried that we'll be giving Dublin any major advantage. We will be giving it everything to try and keep our winning run going.”

CORK: C Richmond; M Duggan, D Kiniry, S Kelly; A Corcoran, S McGoldrick, R Corkery; A Healy, A O'Mahony; R Leahy, G Murphy, E Cleary; A O'Sullivan, K Quirke, L Hallihan.

DUBLIN: A Shiels; N Crowley, H Leahy, C Almeida; S McIntyre, H McGinnis, N Donlon; R Hartnett, O Nolan; E Gribbin, L Grendon, C Rowe; J Egan, N Hetherton, K Sullivan.