Cork set out to complete rise with final momentum

Women's Football / All-Ireland Final / Galway v Cork: Ian O'Riordan talks to Juliet Murphy whose consistency has defined her county's progression this season

As with any major sporting occasion, it doesn't really matter who wins tomorrow's All-Ireland women's football final - unless of course you're from Cork or Galway - as long as it's relatively exciting, hits the right sense of occasion, and ultimately comes across as a worthy advertisement for the game.

Without getting overly sporting about it, the same could have been said about last Sunday's meeting between Tyrone and Kerry - which delivered on all three counts.

Yet, tomorrow's meeting between Cork and Galway is more heavily burdened by the need for such credentials. As the annual showcase for the women's game, the only chance to grace Croke Park and with TG4 capturing every move, it's almost paramount that the success of the day is not just limited to the victorious team.

Last year's final, between Galway and Dublin, drew a crowd of 20,706, around 10,000 fewer than attended the 2003 final. Only 14,350 showed up to watch the camogie final in Croke Park a fortnight ago, and they're the kind of attendances that could threaten these finals going to GAA headquarters in the future.

Still, there is every reason to believe Cork and Galway will also deliver on all three counts. No less than Tyrone and Kerry, they've long been fancied to get this far, having contested the league decider earlier this year, and deservedly beating all their opponents on route to tomorrow's final.

While Galway will be defending the title they won for the first time last year, Cork will be looking to complete their rise in women's football by winning the senior title for the first time.

Cork's recent success, however, highlights another of the problems facing women's football. They've been the dominant force at underage for the past few years, and so far that's been reflected in their winning two All-Ireland club finals with Donoughmore and two consecutive Munster titles and then - the high point to date - beating Galway in that league final earlier this year.

Team captain and midfielder Juliet Murphy has been at the centre of all those recent successes at club as well as county level. The 25-year-old has also worked her way up via the underage pathways, having started playing football at the age of 10.

While Murphy argues this Cork team do represent the benefits of that building process, she also feels women's football can't solely rely on underage success for its survival.

"I suppose people have been saying that this Cork team have been building for a while. But underage success still doesn't guarantee you're going to have it at senior level. There are so many factors that can come into play, and I suppose the girls tend to give up football that bit earlier.

"There are players on this team who have stuck to it when things weren't going well. So it's nice for them to get the reward. But you just have to look at the profile of women's football, and it does tend to be a teenage game, and maybe up to 22 to 23. After that you have a few older ones. It's hard to say why that is, but obviously girls will be having more interests during those years.

"And there is an awful lot of commitment needed now to be successful at senior level. Only a select few people are going to give that."

Murphy is lucky her lifestyle is almost ideally suited and flexible enough for playing football at the high level now required in the women's game. She manages two fitness centres in Cork city, so gym work is never a hassle, and she can allow herself to skip off a little early to make training.

Winning a senior title would go a long way to ensuring some of the younger members of the team will stay on for at least the foreseeable future. Cork boast a wide-ranging age profile, with forward Amanda Murphy only 15 years old and Mary O'Connor 28. But, again, Murphy is slow to pin this year's success on the recent crop of younger talent.

"A lot of these players never achieved anything at underage. So I think the players were always there, and it was just a matter of getting the correct structures. It's also gone very professional, especially at the management end. Everything is organised for us now, whereas going back a few years that would not have been the case."

Cork's arrival in Croke Park for the first time can only be a good thing for women's football, spreading the power into previously untapped areas. Their victory over Mayo in last month's semi-final illustrated their new levels of confidence too, as they closed down a three-point deficit with as many minutes remaining.

Fittingly, the winning point then came from the boot of Murphy, whose consistency and thoroughness have defined Cork's progression this season.

Strictly speaking tomorrow will be her first game in Croke Park, although she did play across it rather than up and down it back in 1991, when as an 11-year-old she played in the half-time sevens match at the Down-Meath men's final.

She got another little taste of it when watching five of her team-mates capture the camogie title a fortnight ago.

"Of course playing in Croke Park is something I've always dreamed about, because I've been watching women's finals on television for as long as I can remember, thinking some day I might get there. We also came up to support the camogie team for their final.

"Just experiencing that meant a lot, seeing how happy they were after winning, and their joy. Angela Walsh came up to me and said we'll have to win the football now.

"You could sense what it meant to them, and you'd love to have that same feeling."