TG4 All-Ireland Ladies’ SFC semi-final
Cork 0-10 Galway 2-7
GALWAY forward Róisín Leonard said they will embrace the football fever which has engulfed the county as both the ladies’ and men’s teams reach their All-Ireland finals for the first time ever in the same year.
This will be Galway’s fifth appearance in the TG4 All-Ireland final as they bid for their first title since their sole success in 2004 and Leonard, who hit 1-5 in Saturday’s win over Cork at Glenisk O’Connor Park in Tullamore, said it is a special time for the county.
“We’ll jump on the buzz of the boys and hopefully everyone can bring home some silverware,” she said.
“It’s a credit to all the girls here. They fought tooth and nail for everything out on the pitch today and I think, in fairness, we were the better team.
“We saw from Cork in the first half how hard it was against the breeze. Frees were hard, everything was hard. You had to bring the ball a lot closer to goal, but I think we did fairly well with that and we controlled the ball around the middle-third.”
Both of these teams were relegated from Division One in the Lidl National League earlier in the season but regrouped to mount serious championship campaigns and Leonard said they learned a lot from a clash with Cork in the group stages of the title race.
“We were very disappointed with that performance against Cork. That was the first game in championship and we really weren’t happy with it. We knew we had a load of room for improvement and we felt that if we could improve ourselves and forget about worrying about the opposition, that it might go better for us. Thankfully it did.”
Leonard and Ailbhe Davoren struck the crucial first-half goals as Galway returned to a decider for the first time since 2019.
Despite the impressive Katie Quirke amassing a personal tally of 0-7 for their Munster counterparts, clinical finishes from Leonard and Davoren in the 14th and 27th minutes helped Daniel Moynihan’s charges to match their male counterparts in reaching an All-Ireland SFC final.
Scorers
Cork K Quirke 0-7 (4f), E Cleary, L O’Mahony, A McAuliffe 0-1 each
Galway R Leonard 1-5 (1-0 pen, 0-3f), A Davoren 1-0, O Divilly 0-2 (2f)