'It is really anyone’s opportunity to take' - Cork hope to push on in 'unpredictable' championship
WHILE SHE ADMITS it required a slight adjustment on her part, Máire O’Callaghan was ultimately more than happy to pass on the mantle of Cork captain to Sarah Leahy at the beginning of 2025.
When she was announced as skipper of the Leeside footballers in 2022, the Mourneabbey stalwart followed in the footsteps of her first cousins Ciara and Doireann O’Sullivan – both of whom lifted national silverware during their stints as team captain.
While O’Callaghan didn’t get this opportunity in the red of her native county, she did help guide Cork to a TG4 Munster senior football championship crown during her debut campaign as team leader before unfortunately missing their defence of the title through injury in 2023.
She continued in the role up until the end of the 2024 inter-county season, but it was defensive lynchpin Leahy – from county senior champions Aghada – who was tasked with leading Cork into battle this year.
“I suppose it was a slight adjustment, but nothing too crazy. We would have always said that there wasn’t too much difference between any of the leaders on the team and the captain. It has been a slight bit of a change,” O’Callaghan explained.
“The three years was a huge honour. To be honest, that was great for me and I’m happy to see someone else take the reins. Sarah has been a fantastic captain, so you couldn’t have asked for a better person to step in after me.
“It was great to see Ciara and Doireann captain Cork before. Especially also to represent Mourneabbey at that level as well with taking over the captaincy and the three of us being there. It is really nice definitely and it’s a huge honour.”
First introduced to the panel in 2013, O’Callaghan spent the next decade training and playing alongside Ciara and Doireann in the Cork set-up. That all changed in 2024, however, when the O’Sullivan sisters officially announced their retirements on 8 March of that year.
They had initially indicated a desire to take a break from inter-county football (Ciara for the 2024 Lidl National Football League and Doireann for the entire year) around the same time that it was revealed their sibling Meabh was also stepping away from the Leeside panel to go travelling.
Given how close she is to the O’Sullivans – as well as their sister Roisin, another former Cork player – there was a certain void left when this influential triumvirate brought a halt to their respective inter-county journeys.
Yet O’Callaghan is one of a number of established figures Cork boss Joe Carroll can rely upon in the current squad as they seek to remain a force at the highest level of ladies football.
“There was a lot of my Mourneabbey club-mates that stepped away at the end of 2023. Definitely there was an adjustment period there with that. When you’re used to playing with a lot of the girls that you play with at club level as well, but everyone can make their decisions on whatever time they are ready to step away.
“It definitely was strange not seeing them three times a week for Cork training, but I get to see them still at Mourneabbey training anyway. We have plenty of players that have been around for a long time.
“The likes of Melissa Duggan. Aine Terry [O’Sullivan] is back this year, who has plenty of experience at inter-county level as well. Shauna Kelly, who I know is injured, would have brought a lot of continuity to that leadership. Which is great.”
The aforementioned Kelly was withdrawn through injury 25 minutes into Cork’s TG4 All-Ireland senior football championship Group 2 clash with Mayo at Hastings Insurance MacHale Park a fortnight ago. Before that, O’Callaghan had given the Leesiders a dream start to the action when she rattled the opposition net with just 17 seconds on the clock.
Had Cork failed to win this game, they would have found themselves entering into an All-Ireland SFC relegation play-off along with Donegal, Armagh and Leitrim. In the end, the visitors came through with a 3-8 to 1-10 victory and will instead face Dublin in a quarter-final encounter at Parnell Park later on today.
“Mayo pushed us to the very last minute. A draw would have been enough to see them through onto the next stage of the competition. You could really see that fight in them all throughout the game. We were really happy with how we responded to that and how we responded to a lot of things that went wrong in the game.
“We still were able to respond to all of those things. I think that is something that we’ll take away and be really happy with how we dealt with it going forward into our next game against Dublin.”
While Cork would normally have played Dublin at least once in advance of previous TG4 All-Ireland senior football championships, this year was slightly different. After suffering relegation from the top-tier in 2024, the Munster side featured in Division 2 of the Lidl National Football League in the past spring.
Although they faced a number of senior championship outfits at this level, the Jackies remained in Division 1 of the NFL for 2025.
This means O’Callaghan and her Cork colleagues haven’t experienced first-hand what Dublin are like in the current season, but having viewed a number of their games to date in 2025, she is acutely aware of the challenge that awaits them in Donnycarney this afternoon.
“They have a fantastic strength in depth in their panel and they’ve a lot of new girls pushing through. A lot of pace and energy. You can see that in how they played against Meath firstly in their Leinster final. They were able to pull that back and finish really strongly. Which also shows their experience,” O’Callaghan added.
“It’s definitely a challenge, but it’s something we’re looking forward to. I think it’s hard to keep an eye on every team in the championship really because it’s quite wide open this year. There have been a lot of surprises even in the group stages.
“Teams bowing out and teams pushing through and things like that. Which is a really good sign of a championship, how unpredictable it is. It is really anyone’s opportunity to take.”
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