St Finbarr’s captain Stephanie Punch says the Cork champions are not dwelling on the closing stages of Sunday’s drawn All-Ireland senior club camogie final. Instead, she insists they are focusing on getting over the line in the replay.
The Barrs led by six points with four minutes of normal time remaining at Croke Park, only for Galway’s Athenry to score 1-3 in the closing stages to send the final to a replay on the weekend of January 3rd-4th.
The Camogie Association hopes to confirm details of the fixture over the next 24 hours. Semple Stadium in Thurles, O’Moore Park in Portlaoise and the Gaelic Grounds in Limerick have all been mentioned as possible venues.
Athenry appear to have all the momentum now given the circumstances of the closing stages at Croke Park on Sunday. To the westerners, the draw almost felt like a win.
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However, Punch says the Cork city side will not be spending the festive period labouring on what might have been.
“We are well aware we left a few chances behind us,” said the defender. “They came back at us and they came back at us hard.
“I am proud of the team, we defended like dogs there at the end. We could very well be talking about us having lost by a point; there was a lot of momentum with them in the end.
“But we still have another crack at it, so we’ll drive on for the next couple of weeks. We’ll definitely take heart from the fact that we were on top for the majority of the game.”
It was a first All-Ireland final appearance by St Finbarr’s and after a cautious opening quarter, they found their rhythm and led from the 17th minute all the way until Kayla Madden’s equaliser in the fifth minute of injury time.
Punch added: “Every game is great experience. We have a lot of girls who are experienced here, but we have a lot of girls, myself included, who wouldn’t be used to playing in big stadiums [like Croke Park].
“It took us a few minutes to settle but once we did, the nerves were gone and the girls really drove on. There is always an element of nerves when you are not used to it. We have got over that now, so we are just looking forward to the next game.”
Finishing games level at the end of regulation time has become something of a habit for St Finbarr’s this season. They needed two periods of extra-time in both their Munster final win over Newcastle West and their All-Ireland semi-final victory over Loughgiel Shamrocks.
“I don’t think we have done anything easy this year,” said Punch.
But given the flow of the game coming down the stretch, the St Finbarr’s captain was somewhat relieved there was to be no extra-time last Sunday.
“They had all the momentum there at the end, so I am not too sure to be honest,” she said when asked if she would have preferred extra-time.
“It would have been great to have it done on the day, but they’ll have taken huge heart finishing out with 1-3, so it is fair enough that we both have another crack at it in January.”
