Experience to tell as Sarsfields take on first-timers Loughgiel in camogie final

All-Ireland club camogie senior final: Sarsfields (Galway) v Loughgiel (Antrim), Saturday, Croke Park, 6.30 – Live RTÉ 2

You never know what Croke Park holds until you get there.

Of all the factors that will decide Saturday night’s All-Ireland club camogie final, the bang of the Big House is bound to loom large. For Loughgiel, this is their first ever appearance at headquarters. For Sarsfields, it’s their third All-Ireland final inside 12 months and their third trip to Croker since 2020. Worlds apart.

“It’s such a huge factor,” says Ursula Jacob, twice an All-Ireland club winner and part of the Oulart-The Ballagh side that played the last two finals against Sarsfields.

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“Even if I go back to the first time I played there back in 2007 with Wexford, we were doing our warm-up and one of our selectors was going around to each of us telling us to look around and to take in the whole place.

“You can’t ignore the fact that Croke Park is different to every other pitch in the country. The ground is better than everywhere else, the size and dimensions are bigger than everywhere else, everything just feels bigger. And if it’s your first time there, you can feel you’re going into the lion’s den.

“That’s the one big worry you would have for Loughgiel – some of them have played there for Antrim but quite a few of them will be playing their first ever game there. Whereas Sarsfields were all there in March.”

Jacob has seen both teams from every angle. Loughgiel are huge underdogs but when Antrim beat Kilkenny to win the Intermediate All-Ireland last September, 14 of these players were on the panel and seven of them started – including the whole of the full-forward line. This is their first time in a club All-Ireland final but they’re not a bolt from the blue either.

“Loughgiel’s big challenge down the years has always been the fact that Slaughtneil were in their way up in Ulster,” she says.

“Slaughtneil won four All-Irelands in a row but most of those years, it was Loughgiel who got closest to them. A couple of years, they only lost by a point. So you look at that team now and some of them lost six Ulster finals in a row to Slaughtneil before finally beating them at the seventh attempt. That tells you what they’re made of.”

Facing them are a Sarsfields side looking to win their third All-Ireland out of the past four. The one they lost was this weekend last year, with Jacob’s Oulart beating them by five points in Nowlan Park. Backboned by a scattering of McGrath sisters, that stands as the only game they’ve lost since 2019. á

“They have huge experience,” says Jacob. “For a lot of them, this will be their sixth All-Ireland final in seven years. They’ve had a few injuries this year – Orla McGrath has been out with a cruciate ligament and I’ve got the sense from them that there’s a real attitude of doing it for the girls that are missing.

“When you have so many sisters in one team, they’ll kill each other half the time but they’ll have each other’s backs all the time and that’s one of the things that makes them so good. The Sarsfields midfield is the key to them. So much goes through it and they cover so much ground. Loughgiel will need Amy Boyle and Lucia McNaughton to really hold their own in there, otherwise it could get away from them.”

A comfortable Sarsfield’s win, so?

“Not necessarily,” says Jacob. “For Loughgiel to hang in there, they need three things to go right for them. They must have a fast start, especially since the Croke Park factor can be so demoralising if you’re on the back foot against a dominant team early on. Secondly, they have to get goals – they have a brilliant full-forward line who will go for goals if they get enough ball up to them.

“But most of all, they have to run at Sarsfields. We found that in the games we played against them. If you run at them, you pull them out of their shape. They like to be solid and get set in their shape but once you run at them, they have to either press up on you or foul you. It’s vital for Loughgiel to move them around. Otherwise, Sarsfields are so ruthless that they could punish them severely.”