The Irish Times/Sport Ireland Sportswoman Award for October: Courtney Brosnan (Soccer) and Kellie Harrington (Boxing).
It was all fine and dandy for Irish sports fans to celebrate the winning of seven – seven! – medals at the women’s European Amateur Boxing Championships in Montenegro last month, but where was the pity for those judges charged with the task of choosing a sportswoman of the month for October?
Bear in mind, three days before those championships got under way, there was the small matter of the Republic of Ireland qualifying for their first ever World Cup with that win over Scotland in Glasgow.
Ideally, then, we’d have had a joint award between boxing medalists Kellie Harrington, Amy Broadhurst, Aoife O’Rourke, Caitlin Fryers, Christina Desmond, Shannon Sweeney and Michaela Walsh and all 12 players who contributed to that historic victory over Scotland.
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Alas, the judges were instructed to be a touch more selective.
At least Broadhurst could be eliminated from the list of contenders, having already shared our May award after winning World Championship gold in Turkey – before achieving the same feat at the Commonwealth Games and European Championships, where she was also named boxer of the tournament.
In the end – and it was severely painful to have to overlook so many deserving names – we opted for a joint award between Harrington and Irish goalkeeper Courtney Brosnan.
By beating the Czech Republic’s Lenka Bernadova on a unanimous decision in her lightweight final, Harrington completed an illustrious set of medals, matching Katie Taylor’s achievement of winning Olympic, World Championship and European Championship gold.
A feat of that magnitude doesn’t just earn her a place on our monthly roll of honour for the year, it makes her a serious contender to win her second overall award, having collected her first in 2018.
It was no less tricky narrowing our football pick to one player considering the contribution of so many of the Irish squad to their World Cup-qualifying achievement, among them captain Katie McCabe and the ever brilliant midfielder Denise O’Sullivan – not to mention the scorer of that magical goal in Glasgow, Amber Barrett.
But Brosnan’s critical save that night from Caroline Weir’s penalty capped what was an excellent campaign by the New Jersey-born goalkeeper, all the more impressive because she had to recover from a shaky start to her international career which began in March 2020.
Brosnan kept five clean sheets in the qualifying campaign’s nine games, never conceding more than one goal in the other four, her form a major factor in the team’s success.
Harrington and Brosnan it is, then, with apologies to the other . . . strewth . . . 16 October contenders who would have been shoo-ins in any other month.
Previous Monthly Winners (the awards run from December 2021 to November 2022, inclusive)
December: Ellen Walshe (Swimming). The young Dubliner became the first Irish woman to medal at a World Championships when she took silver in the 400m Individual Medley in Abu Dhabi. Along the way, she broke five Irish records, smashing the oldest, Michelle Smith’s 1994 400m Individual Medley mark.
January: Lucy Mulhall (Rugby). The Wicklow woman captained Ireland to their first ever World Rugby Sevens Series final in Seville and was named in the team of the tournament. She and her team-mates took that form to Bucharest last month where Mulhall led them to qualification for September’s World Cup.
February: Leona Maguire (Golf). The highlight of another excellent season for Maguire came at the Drive On Championship in Florida where she became the first Irish woman to win on the LPGA Tour. And she now has three top 10 finishes in Majors to her name, including a share of fourth at the AIG Women’s Open at Muirfield.
March: Rachael Blackmore (Horse racing). Our 2021 sportswoman of the year had another Cheltenham to remember, winning The Champion Hurdle on Honeysuckle and the Gold Cup on A Plus Tard – making her the holder of those two crowns as well as the English Grand National all at the same time.
April: Katie Taylor (Boxing). Our five-time Sportswoman of the Year made herself a contender for the award yet again after winning an epic fight against Amanda Serrano in front of a crowd of 20,000 in Madison Square Garden. And last month, Taylor extended her unbeaten professional record to 22 when she beat Argentina’s Karen Carbajal at Wembley Arena to retain her world titles.
May: Amy Broadhurst and Lisa O’Rourke (Boxing). Following in the path of Katie Taylor, Michael Conlan and Kellie Harrington, the pair brought to five the number of Ireland’s amateur world champions when they both struck gold at the World Championships in Turkey. Broadhurst went on to add a Commonwealth Games and European Championship gold medal to her 2022 collection.
June: Rhasidat Adeleke (Athletics). It’s been a terrific year for the 19-year-old who has broken five Irish records since January. And in June she became the first Irish woman to win a National Collegiate Athletic Association sprint title when she was part of the triumphant University of Texas team in the 4x100m.
July: Niamh O’Sullivan (Gaelic football). The player of the match in the All Ireland final, O’Sullivan not only top-scored for Meath, she led from the front, driving them on from a five point deficit against Kerry to retain their title, her 45th minute goal proving pivotal.
August: Ciara Mageean (Athletics). A season to remember for the Portaferry athlete, winning 1500m silver medals in both the Commonwealth Games and European Championships, before becoming the first Irish woman to break the four-minute barrier at the same distance in Brussels, smashing Sonia O’Sullivan’s 27-year-old national record in the process.
September: Katie O’Brien (Rowing). The Galway para rower produced an outstanding performance in the PR2 single sculls final at the World Championships in the Czech Republic, winning gold by beating Kathryn Ross of Australia, the reigning world champion, by 10 seconds to top the World Championship bronze she won three years before.
