Hurling & Camogie

Gráinne McGoldrick: My top three standout camogie clashes

Derry Grainne McGoldrick battles in the goal mouth with Carlow keeper Kate Kinsella and Michelle Nolan at Swatragh on August 4 2018. Picture by Margaret McLaughlin.
Derry Grainne McGoldrick battles in the goal mouth with Carlow keeper Kate Kinsella and Michelle Nolan at Swatragh on August 4 2018. Picture by Margaret McLaughlin. Derry Grainne McGoldrick battles in the goal mouth with Carlow keeper Kate Kinsella and Michelle Nolan at Swatragh on August 4 2018. Picture by Margaret McLaughlin.

GRÁINNE is the eldest of the McGoldrick family that has back-boned Eoghan Rua Coleraine’s successes across three codes.

When Sean and Schira McGoldrick began raising their family in Portstewart, there was a football club in nearby Coleraine.

From there hurling developed and Gráinne, along with her friend Jane Carey, mixed it with the boys up through the age-groups.

Only when she came into the Under 16 grade was there an effort made to form a camogie team, which participated in the Derry leagues, but were hammered on every outing.

Eventually a senior team was established in 2000 and they steadily and quickly crept up the grades in Derry.

Gráinne, of course, was a key player in the rise of Eoghan Rua, progressing to county and provincial teams and winning an All-star.

Her playing career looked over in 2014 when she suffered a serious knee injury early in the 2014 Ulster club final against Loughgiel.

It kept her on the sidelines for three seasons but she returned to the Derry team last year and picked up a Soaring Star award a decade after she became Ulster’s fourth and last full All-star.

Here she discusses the three games that stand out for her in a senior county career that is entering its third decade...

2005 Derry Intermediate club final replay: Eoghan Rua Coleraine 4-11 Ballinascreen 5-7

“TO realise the importance of winning this game, you have to understand where we had come from.

“A senior team had only been formed five years earlier.

“You had a few of us who played for that first Under 16 team, a few others who had played in the university in Coleraine and were now living in the area and a few more who were just playing to make up the numbers.

“It was our third final and we had been well beaten in the others.

“To us, Ballinascreen were a senior team that had dropped down a grade and we expected to get beaten.

“We had come from behind to get a replay, but it looked bad after ten minutes.

“We already were four goals down and conceded another before half-time and were 5-4 to 2-4 down at the break. But somehow we got back into the game.

“I cannot remember a lot about the actual play. I know my sister Méabh was 15 or 16 and scored a goal and I remember that the dusk was gathering around us when the game was going into injury time.

“Sean McGuigan was the referee and we were two points behind when a hit and hope ball into the square produced the winning goal from the unlikeliest of sources.

“Judith Kelly won’t mind me saying that. She just doubled on the ball in the air and it hit the net. It was a fluke.

“We went to the pitch the next evening and tried to re-create that goal with her.

“We hit ball after ball into her all evening and she missed every one. But she had connected with the only one that really counted.

“We felt such a sense of achievement that evening. This was just beyond our dreams a couple of years earlier.

“There weren’t too many around to see it. I suppose camogie and GAA didn’t have very much of a profile in the area and the only ones there were family and a few friends.

“But it still meant so much.”

2010/11 All-Ireland Intermediate club final: Eoghan Rua Coleraine 3-8?The Harps, Laois?2-3

“SO we made the journey from nowhere to the Intermediate final inside five years and then went from there to winning the Derry, Ulster and All-Ireland club titles inside the next five.

But it wasn’t just as straightforward as it looks.

“Yes, we were very lucky that we picked up two excellent players in Kelly Maybin and Grace McMullan just after we won the Intermediate, but there was a big gap between coming up from intermediate and playing the top senior sides in Derry.

“We didn’t look like bridging that gap for a couple of seasons.

“Then we went to the Dubai Sevens in 2009 and beat a few very good teams like St Catherine’s from Cork who had some county seniors playing including Orla Cotter.

“That gave us a lot of confidence and we thought that we could maybe do something in the championship.

“Then Lavey just hammered us. It was huge reality check.

“The next season we got in a few good young girls who were still under 16, Eilis McNamee, Rosanna McAleese and Megan Kerr and they really made a difference.

“Lavey had won the All-Ireland title earlier that year, but we sailed through to win Derry for the first time and the boys won their first county senior football title at the same time.

“Then we beat Clonduff to win Ulster and Katie Mullan, the Irish Hockey captain scored a late goal to help us beat Lismore from Waterford in the All-Ireland semi-final early in 2011.

“We were in Croke Park facing The Harps from Laois who had won three successive titles and had lost the previous year’s semi-final.

“Now the boys had lost the 2007 All-Ireland Intermediate football final to Ardfert in Croke Park and we were determined that it wasn’t going to happen to us.

“If you remember around Christmas and early January that year there was a big freeze.

“But we were able to train away as Portstewart escaped a good bit of it. Still there were a few sessions that had to be switched to the beach.

“I remember being on the beach on St Stephen’s Day.

“It was bitterly cold and at the end of the session the managers called us in for a brief chat, but I actually keeled over, fainted.

“Grace (McMullan) was a great help to us.

“She was a very experienced player, but she also was able to convince us of our potential and she had a calm influence on the team as well.

“She scored three goals in the final. We all played well as a team and I will never get over the feeling of euphoria watching Méabh (sister) lifting the cup. She also got Player of the Match.

“Brendan McLarnon and Joe Passmore were our managers and they had worked so hard and sacrificed so much to get us to that point.

“There were tears in their eyes. It was just so lovely to see. Just their passion and their pride in us.

“By this time it was more of a community event. Everyone had come together to fund-raise for us. We had a hard-working committee that put a lot of effort in and we had a lot of support in Croke Park.

“When I think back to that match, I just have such a feeling of pride and a sense of fulfilment in what had been achieved over the course of a decade.”

2012 All-Ireland Intermediate final: Derry 2-10 Galway 2-9 in a replay

“WITH Derry we had our ups and downs.

“Winning the 2007 Junior All-Ireland was a highlight. It was my first time playing in Croke Park, an exciting game and my sister Méabh came on as a sub.

“She was only 18 then. By 2012 she was well established in the team.

“We are the only two girls in the family and it just is so special that Méabh has been beside me for all the big days, club and county.

“Derry had lost in the Intermediate semi-finals three years in a row 2009-11, so getting to the final in Croke Park was a breakthrough in itself.

“By 2012 we were together now as a panel for four years and our team-work was good.

“We also had depth in the panel, it was probably the best group of players that I had played with at county level.

“We had beaten Galway in the league by just a point. So this was always going to be a close game.

“We were playing well all over the pitch in the first half, Sinéad Cassidy was brilliant at midfield. But we gave away a bad goal before half time. My fault.

“For 20 minutes of the second half we couldn’t score and Galway went ahead. Then Karen Kielt hand-passed a goal, but it was disallowed. Katie McAnenly scored the resultant penalty though and we went a point ahead.

“However Galway equalised. 3-12 each and a replay then in Ashbourne.

“The replay was just as tight and exciting. Katie (McAnenly) hit an amazing goal that day and Karen (Kielt) scored a late one to get us over the line.

“I wouldn’t say my own contribution on either day was anywhere near my best.

“But the result was all that mattered. We had won the league earlier in the year and were up in Division 1 for the first time. Now we were into the senior championship for the first time.

“As players you always want to mix it with the best, challenge yourself as an individual and as a team and we were able to do that over the next few seasons as a result of that win in Ashbourne.

“John Angelo (Mullan), Maura McCloy and Melinda Pappy (O’Kane) was the management team and they put a lot of work in to get us to that point. Melinda was a kind of mother figure to the players the way she looked after us.

“We also had Katrina Pappy, Melinda’s sister, on the team.

“Their mother was terminally ill and we called at their house with the Cup on the way home. That was very emotional for everyone, but a lovely memory to hold.

“When we won the Junior five years earlier it made little impact on the young people around Coleraine.

“I was teaching in St Joseph’s High school and when I arrived back, Hugh Mooney and Denise Frizelle in the PE Department had organised a banner to be hung in the playground – “Congratulations Gráinne”

“As I came in, I saw quite a few of the students staring at the banner puzzled and one of them said: “Who the hell is a granny?”

“Success with the club and county over the next five years meant that there was a completely different reaction in 2012.”