They’ve been doing some flag rearranging around the Black household in Galway over the last week or so.
Róisín Black’s father is an Armagh man, and wore the jersey proudly at Croke Park last Sunday week, but, perhaps keen to keep the peace locally given the result, he took the orange colours down from the front gate soon enough afterwards.
“One side of the gate was Armagh, one was Galway,” smiles Róisín, who will captain the Galway camogie team in Sunday’s Glen Dimplex All-Ireland final. “The Armagh side has come down! Only the Galway is up.”
The hope out west is that after two final failures for Galway teams over the last two Sundays, it will be third time lucky when the camogie team face Cork.
Pádraic Joyce and the men’s football team suffered that loss to Armagh and the pain of defeat was compounded by their female counterparts’ loss to Kerry last Sunday.
“I went up with Dad,” says Black of the men’s narrow defeat to Armagh. “I’d the Galway jersey on, he had the Armagh jersey on. He was in the Nally, I was in the lower Hogan. We actually saw each other. At least one of us went home happy.”
Maybe it’s a good omen that Mary Black, who captained Armagh to All-Ireland intermediate camogie success in 1994, is Róisín’s auntie. Armagh beat Kildare 7-11 to 3-11 in that final exactly 30 years ago, though a one-point win for Galway would do just fine for primary schoolteacher Black this time.
They are considerable underdogs to bring the O’Duffy Cup back to Galway, partly because Cork are champions, partly because the Munster title holders have blitzed all comers so far in the championship. When the sides met just six weeks ago, Cork beat Galway 2-16 to 1-7.
That was a final round group game at Páirc Uí Chaoimh and Cork’s 12-point win secured top spot in the table, easing them through to the championship’s last four.
As if to underline Cork’s quality, Ger Manley’s side demolished Dublin by 4-17 to 0-9 in their semi-final, while Galway have battled beyond Waterford and Tipperary to reach the decider.
They simply can’t afford a repeat of the performance they gave against Cork in late June, Black says.
“We had a lot of games on the road, one after the other,” she says, reflecting on the build-up to that last meeting. “But Cork wanted it more that day. We didn’t show up. Our work rate wasn’t in it. They ran at us, got all the scores they needed. They were just the better team that day.
“We had to sit down and have a look at ourselves after that. A performance like that is not going to win us any games. We had a six-day turnaround to play Waterford in the quarter-final so we really had to dust ourselves down and go again.
“We didn’t have any time to feel sorry for ourselves. And we had great victories over Waterford and Tipperary, so hopefully that defeat will stand to us, that we’ll learn a lot from those games.”
[ Cork camogie captain Molly Lynch aiming for two All-Ireland titles in one weekOpens in new window ]
Galway did beat Cork in the league, on their way to the final.
“They’ve kicked on another notch since the league,” Black says. “They had a great victory over Dublin, so it will be a tough battle. We’re saying to just treat it like any other game. We have a lot of girls with experience of All-Irelands, and from winning in 2021, we’ve had league finals as well and experience of playing in Croke Park so hopefully the occasion won’t get to the girls.”
Black has been enjoying the Olympics and the success of so many Irish athletes.
“The boxing, the swimming, you could go on for a long time with how amazing they all are,” she says. “No more than ourselves, they are athletes trying to juggle everything so you get motivation from them as well.”
Black won gold herself with Galway three years ago, when they beat Cork in the 2021 All-Ireland decider.
“Just a great win for Galway,” she says. “We beat Cork that day in a thrilling game. It’s a feeling you want to get back soon.”
