Maria Cooney admits that Sarsfields need to capitalise on their current golden era by hoovering up more All-Irelands.
The Galway kingpins are back in the AIB All-Ireland club camogie semi-final tomorrow against old rivals Slaughtneil, who they’ve faced in three finals previously.
After losing to the Derry girls in 2017 and ‘18, they finally saw them off in dramatic circumstances in the 2020 decider but they relinquished the title in the delayed 2021 final in December to Oulart-The Ballagh, making for an underwhelming strike rate in the All-Ireland series overall.
Cooney said: “That one that we did win was obviously a huge thing and a huge relief for the fact that we finally did get there but I suppose, with the way sport is you have highs and you have lows.
“In one sense you’re happy that, lookit, we’ve got there again but in another sense you really have to capitalise on it so I suppose it’s just that we really need to dig that bit deeper and drive on a bit more and to hopefully, if we have the opportunity, get as many of them as we can.”
The Oulart defeat denied them of the opportunity to win two-in-a-row and thereby emulate the achievements of the Sarsfields hurlers in 1993 and ‘94, when her father Joe was a stalwart of the side.
“Obviously it would have been a huge achievement to have done that but, again, we were just kind of focused on the game. It was a thing that would have been said that fathers, uncles, things like that would have done it before.
“It was something that was there but something we didn’t dwell on too much because it’s very seldom that you even get to those stages.”
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