ARMAGH full back Clodagh McCambridge believes there is plenty still to come from the Orchard County in this year’s All-Ireland championship but they need to get past Cork in tomorrow's quarter-final.
The Munster champions make the long trek to the Athletic Grounds with the exact same intentions as Armagh – to book their place in the semi-finals.
Armagh have bowed out of the competition at this quarter-final stage for the last two years – losses to Meath in 2021 and Kerry in 2022 ending their All-Ireland hopes.
As Ulster champions those two years, hopes were high of great things, so to not progress any further in the knockout stages was a blow even though they lost out to the eventual All-Ireland champions in 2021 and the All-Ireland runners-up in 2022.
This year, they are not Ulster champions, having lost their title to Donegal, but they have bounced back impressively topping their group with wins over Laois and Connacht champions Mayo to seal a home quarter-final and come into these knockout stages with some momentum.
It has been the required response from Shane McCormack’s side and the only one says McCambridge.
“It was really important to bounce back. We weren’t happy with our Ulster final performance, and we knew if we were going to make any progress through the group stages, we needed to quickly improve on that and focus on the next games that were in front of us, as Mayo and Laois were always going to be big challenges that we needed to step up to,” she said.
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“The past two years we have been beaten at the quarter-final stages, but there is still a great belief within this group that we are capable of more. It’s just now about putting in performances at the latter end of the season to prove that we are in that top group of teams.”
Last year’s loss to Kerry in the knockout stages remains one that McCambridge feels they could have won and they have learned a lot from it.
That has been evident in how they have dug deep during games, as recently as the Mayo game, to come back from behind and grind out the win, and it’s not so much about focussing on the loss to Kerry last year but focusing on the learnings and using that as motivation to try and get over this imminent hurdle tomorrow afternoon.
“I think it was a game we were definitely capable of winning, but Kerry were ultimately better on the day and built on that to go on and reach the All-Ireland final.
“I suppose we have been able to look at that as motivation for this year, to make sure that, at this knock out stage, we don’t leave anything behind us, as there are great opportunities ahead in getting over a quarter final.”
Tomorrow’s opposition doesn’t get much bigger or any more difficult that Cork. They were knocked out at this stage as well last year, losing out to Mayo and in a very open championship will, like Armagh, feel that if things go right on the day and they put in a performance there is no reason why they can challenge for All-Ireland honours.
“Cork are stilll an impressive team with some brilliant players, and we’ve seen them rack up some big scores.
It’ll definitely be a step up, but one we feel we are capable of doing, so long as we play to the best of our ability for the full game, otherwise Cork are well able to capitalise on any periods of the game that we might be off.
“The championship is so open and I think we’ve seen throughout that every team is capable of beating anyone on a given day.
We can definitely take confidence from that going into Saturday. We’ll be underdogs but we have full belief that we have the ability to take on that challenge that faces us,” she said.
“There’s no reason why it couldn’t be us as long as we keep doing the right things to take those next few steps to a final and that starts on Saturday.
"We’ve put ourselves into a good position now, gaining a bit of momentum topping our group and a home quarter final. It’s just up to us to put in the performance.”
