MODERN SPORT is supposed to be about equality. But in many respects the sports world remains a man’s world. So when a team like the Cork women footballers come to Croke Park in the last weekend in September, as they have now done for the past five seasons, and depart with the Brendan Martin Cup something has to give.

The excellence of these footballers demands the mantle of greatness. This is irrefutable after what we witnessed yesterday because in opponents Dublin, they collided with a hungry and highly talented group that only floundered in that final lunge to the tape.

It was experience and sheer will that ensured Mary O’Connor’s (playing in a remarkable 17th All-Ireland final) team prevailed. Dublin players slumped to the canvass as the hooter sounded after 90 seconds of shrewd Cork possession ended a contest that thrilled at times.

Dublin, guided by their irrepressible leader in midfield, Denise Masterson and the inspirational Mary Nevin, carried themselves like champions. Well, that is, until it really mattered.

With eight minutes remaining Dublin had all the momentum and led 0-10 to 1-5. Cork dug deep, with Valerie Mulcahy finding her groove, after a subdued opening half hour, and veteran replacement Mairéad Kelly also making a dramatic impact. Four unanswered points followed. In response, the exhausted Dubliners made some irreversible errors.

“It wasn’t the management that got us through,” said Cork manager Eamon Ryan. “It was the players. I remember looking up at the clock and there was eight minutes left and I left out an expletive. It wasn’t finito but it started with F. I thought it was gone, you know?

“I shifted Juliet (Murphy) back centre back and she came out roaring at me. She wanted to go back centrefield because she could do more. And she did. She made two or three great forays into their half.

“It’s down to the players, really, the last eight minutes, we prepare them. You don’t have any function with eight minutes to go. Just pray.”

After 40 years pounding the sideline, we asked Ryan to put the five-in-a-row into some context.

“People can be glib and say, ‘oh, they are fine-looking women’, and all this. What we would say is they are amazing people and great footballers. We wouldn’t even think of them as girls, if you know what I mean.”

You see, another issue hung over this contest. And this is a shame. At 4pm yesterday the men’s Cork club football final was also thrown-in down in Páirc Uí Chaoimh and, just like the camogie final two weeks ago, the Cork public were forced to choose.

Mary O’Connor arrived to the Hogan Stand podium with something to say. She didn’t gloat. She didn’t take a swipe at the powerbrokers in the Cork GAA either. But there was a slight tint of anger in her words.

“Some people don’t look at ladies’ football in the greater scheme of things but we do.”

Really though it was a memorable, flowing speech from one of the country’s top sportspeople. And there was humour. To Kilkenny she said, “We’ll see your four and raise you one!” Afterwards, the camogie development officer explained her mindset.

“I just felt I needed to justify all the work that had gone into ladies football because All-Ireland finals aren’t won in Croke Park. They’re won in the previous nine months.

“For all of us we have grown up in clubs where a love of the game has been instilled in us and I felt it would have been unjust not to let those people know we are thankful.”

It was no day for mud-slinging.

“The whole panel and management of this team do the whole thing for nothing, Ryan explained. “There are no travelling expenses, no meals, no nothing but we’ve girls who . . . Mairéad Kelly works in the bank in Dublin. She leaves around three in the evening.

“Now to do that she is going in at seven in the morning, working through her lunch break and driving down to Cork and then turning, and if I have a meeting and am talking rubbish, she has to drive back to Dublin at 10 that night.

“Geraldine Flynn drives from Portlaoise. Elaine Harte is married in Tipperary. That’s tremendous commitment.”

That’s why they are the best sports team on this island.

Gaelic Games: pages 6 and 7+