Jubilee celebrations for 2001 Camogie legends

Two weeks on from the Tipperary senior hurlers marking their silver jubilee on All-Ireland Hurling Final day, another great Premier County team will be honoured next Sunday on All-Ireland Camogie Final day at Croke Park as the 2001 senior team will be presented as the Jubilee team.

By Shane Brophy

The Tipperary 2001 All-Ireland Senior Camogie champions anniversary marks one of the county’s greatest sporting achievements as it saw the completion of a remarkable three-in-a-row, cementing Tipp’s status as one of the greatest teams in camogie history.

Under the guidance of manager Michael Cleary and captained by Emily Hayden, the 2001 Premier County team produced a display of skill, composure and clinical finishing to defeat Kilkenny by 4-13 to 1-6 at Croke Park which also completed an historic double as earlier in the day, the junior team, captained by Trish O’Halloran, defeated Offaly to win the All-Ireland title.

Remarkably, eight members of that junior panel were also substitutes on the senior team, earning the unique distinction of winning two All-Ireland medals at Croke Park on the same day, namely, Trish O’Halloran, Lorraine Bourke, Louise Young, Noelette O’Dwyer, Siobhan Ryan, Niamh Connolly, Julie Delaney and Lena Woods.

“When we met up for the last couple of years, it is great to see everyone because you don’t see everyone for such a long time, considering we spent so much of our lives together for such a long time, when you meet up and chat, it feels like only yesterday. It really does forge lifelong bonds,” admitted captain Emily Hayden of their third consecutive year being honoured as the jubilee team..

“When you get together you don’t really appreciate what you achieved until now and you realise that was unbelievable. At the time, we were just in it and getting through it and enjoying ourselves. Now were realise the significance of it.”

“We had a very close bond, all of us. I was honoured to be able to lead those girls into Croke Park and win an All-Ireland with them.”

Senior Glory

To revisit Tipperary’s great success of that year, the reference point always is ‘Years of Plenty’ written by former Nenagh Guardian editor, the late Gerry Slevin, whose passion for the game and this group of players was unbridled, ahead of his time in terms of coverage for women’s sports at local and national level.

Tipperary’s title defence in 2001 wasn’t straightforward, with powerhouse midfielder Angie McDermott taking a year out to go travelling while Caitriona Hennessy also took a break with Niamh Harkin and Paula Bulfin coming into very much a settled side.

The championship format was tweaked with the introduction of a knockout/losers group system with Tipp drawn away to Kilkenny in the opening round on Friday, July 7th at Nowlan Park.

A strong 1-2 burst inside nine minutes, the goal from Deirdre Hughes, set Tipp on their way to a 2-9 to 0-8 victory with Philly Fogarty raising the second green flag. The win was very much built on defence with Kilkenny largely restricted to scores from placed balls with Ciara Gaynor and Therese Brophy to the fore.

Next up for Tipperary was a home game with Wexford a month later on Saturday, 4th August. Ordinarily, a chance to play at Semple Stadium, would have been welcome but the fact it was a curtain-raiser to the drawn All-Ireland Senior Football Championship quarter final between old rivals Dublin and Kerry, meant tickets for Tipp supporters were like hens’ teeth.

Once again Tipp didn’t allow their opponents any hope as they eased to a 3-4 to 1-4 half time lead, extended to 4-9 to 2-7 by the final whistle with Noelle Kennedy the games’ dominant player with 2-5, with fifteen-year-old Claire Grogan and Philly Fogarty also among the goals.

The Semi-Final was the Final

An anomaly in the wording of the semi-final draw led to Kilkenny and Galway drawn together despite both coming through the backdoor, while Tipp and Cork, despite winning their two games, would clash in the last four.

In what would prove to be the defacto All-Ireland final, the semi-finals were fixed for Cusack Park in Mullingar on Saturday, 18th August, however, with the Tipperary hurlers All-Ireland semi-final against Wexford requiring a replay, it was slotted in for 5.00pm at Croke Park, the same time as the camogie game. A compromise of sorts was reached with the camogie semi-final start time brought forward allowing those Tipp supporters who chose to go to Mullingar, to at least watch the hurlers on television.

Played in miserable conditions, the luckless Niamh Harkin was forced to miss out through injury with Louise Young promoted from the junior team. Despite the closeness of the proceedings throughout, Tipperary led from the seventh to the 59th minutes with the help of two Deirdre Hughes goals which proved vital as Cork were finding it easier to get scores overall, and in added time the Rebelettes were one point in front when Hughes was presented with a chance to possibly win the game but took the right option of pointing, and sending the semi-final to a replay, 2-8 to 0-14.

The replay took place at the Gaelic Grounds on Limerick on Saturday, 1st September, and with the juniors having booked their place on All-Ireland Final day a week earlier, the incentive was there for the seniors to make it a double delight.

A hand injury to Louise Young saw Joanne Ryan come into the team that had no fewer than thirteen of the side that played against Cork in the All-Ireland Final the previous September with the Rebels returning with ten as the two rivals went into battle again.

The weather was similar to the drawn encounter on a day also remembered for Jason McAteer scoring the goal for the Republic of Ireland against the Netherlands to set them on their way to qualifying for the last World Cup they would play in, plus U2 playing at Slane.

The camogie was engrossing once more, level at 0-6 apiece at half time with Cork making the first move early in the second half to go three points in front. This was where Tipp’s belief built up from the previous two years would need to come to the fore, and it did in spades to recover and edge a point in front approaching injury time when Una O’Donoghue looked like she had scored the match-winning goal for Cork.

Was there time for Tipp to recover? Yes, there was, beginning with a long range free which Ciara Gaynor landed right into the square with Claire Grogan getting the vital touch to send it to the net and Tipp were back in front.

A Deirdre Hughes point followed and at 1-13 to 1-11, that looked to be that, but there was much more to come. Cork reduced the arrears to a point before Niamh Harkin and Eimear McDonnell combined to score Tipp’s second goal, and there was time for more as Noelle Kennedy’s long range free went all the way to the net as Tipp won 3-13 to 1-12 in what was a crazy three minute spell.

“They were some battles,” Hayden recalls.

“Everyone was saying after the draw and the replay, that was the final that year.”

Coup de gras

Tipperary would have to come down from that win quickly with just over two weeks before the All-Ireland Final, during which the senior hurlers would win the county’s 25th All-Ireland title on September 9th, and two days later came the September 11th atrocities in the United States which cast a damper on the build-up to the All-Ireland Senior & Junior Camogie finals.

The finals went ahead as scheduled with the juniors setting the tone in their All-Ireland Final with a dominant 4-16 to 1-7 win over Offaly.

“It was a sea of blue and gold,” Hayden added of the record 16,000 crowd for the finals.

For the senior decider, Tipperary raging favourites to get the better of Kilkenny in the final for the second time in three years, and from the opening whistle they showed their class with early points from Noelle Kennedy before two goals in the space of three devastating first-half minutes effectively put the game beyond Kilkenny’s reach.

Claire Grogan bagged the opening goal before Deirdre Hughes struck moments later and added a superb point to leave Tipp firmly in control. Player of the match Eimear McDonnell added a third goal before half-time, giving Tipperary a commanding 3-6 to 0-4 lead at the break.

The second half brought more of the same as Grogan added further scores, Kennedy continued to dictate proceedings, and Hughes finished with a tally of 2-2 after expertly converting her second goal.

Kilkenny managed a late consolation goal, but there was never any doubt that the O'Duffy Cup would remain in Tipperary for a third successive year with a 4-13 to 1-6 victory, going onto win two more in 2003 & 2004.

“There wasn’t any softness and there were a couple of reasons for that,” Hayden said of why they were so successful.

“Some of the older girls had been around before those of my age, and had lost a lot of finals. They had that to keep them going as they didn’t want to go back to that.

“Whereas the younger crowd came in and we came in at a great time. My first senior game with Tipp was in 1998 and we won the Intermediate All-Ireland so we didn’t have the thing of all the losses so we just wanted to win as much as we could.”

Manager Michael Cleary summed up the greatness of the team in the aftermath of the All-Ireland win, saying: “They are one of the best teams of all time” adding: “They have it every way. What do you look for in a team? Ability, fitness, attitude, hunger, bottle for the want of a better word. Tipp get ten out of ten in every count.”

Cleary’s impact

The 2001 captain paid tribute to the role manager Michael Cleary played in terms of bringing Tipperary to the next level.

“He had hurling knowledge and that is what put us out in front,” Hayden said.

“We played Cork in May 1999 in the National League Final and we were hammered out the gate, and we won an All-Ireland in September.

“In fairness to Biddy Phillips, she realised we needed help. Sinead Nealon was friendly with Colm Bonnar in Waterford IT and he in turn called Michael Cleary and asked him to come on board.

“Michael initially wasn’t keen but Colm persuaded him to come to one training session and observe and if he didn’t want to come back, that is grand. So, Michael came and did very little the first night, just watched; the second night he took training and knew everyone’s name, and took every session for the following three years.”

Hayden continued: “Once the game changed to fifteen aside (1999) we were no longer being trained as a camogie team, we were being trained as a hurling team and that is what gave us the edge in those first few years.

“Sports phycology was there but nobody was using it but Skippy in his own way was kind of using that.

“I remember him talking to us at the final training session before we played the first All-Ireland Final in 1999, he was talking us through what was going to happen in terms of the dressing room number, going down the corridor and turn left, he was putting the map in our minds. We were prepared for everything. Organisation is the key to success as they say.

“We had a very professional set-up between Michael, Sean Hennessy and Colm Bonnar, who were all hurlers, and Biddy Phillips and Jim Madden had the camogie background. We all got on which was very important.”

The dual successes provided some great family moments, including for Eimear & Deirdre McDonnell who started in both the senior and junior wins respectively while Claire Grogan’s older sisters Helen and Linda lined out in the forwards for the juniors. Also on the junior team was Moira Ryan, sister of Declan Ryan who the previous week won his third All-Ireland senior hurling winners’ medal.

A quarter of a century later, the achievements of this exceptional group remain unmatched in Tipperary camogie. Their historic three-in-a-row secured their place among the county's greatest-ever teams and ensured their legacy will endure for generations but Emily Hayden hopes the current generation won’t wait too long more to experience what they experienced in their “years of plenty.”

“They are so close,” she said.

“Getting beaten in semi-finals for the last number of years is tough going but you are only as good as the people coming behind you and they need to keep bringing on younger players and investing time and effort into them as well, building the panel.

“We were lucky too in that we had a lot of organisational support which was unusual enough at the time, we had the Supporters Club, we had Tom Egan (Horse & Jockey Hotel) as a sponsor which was unprecedented. We were well looked after which helped at lot.”

2001 Tipperary Senior team v Kilkenny: Jovita Delaney (Cashel); Paula Bulfin (Cashel), Una O'Dwyer (Cashel), Claire Madden (Portroe); Sinead Nealon (Burgess), Ciara Gaynor (Kilruane MacDonaghs), Therese Brophy (Burgess); Suzanne Kelly (Toomevara), Philly Fogarty (Cashel 0-1); Joanne Ryan (Drom & Inch), Emily Hayden (Cashel, Capt), Noelle Kennedy (Toomevara 0-5 frees); Eimear McDonnell (Burgess 1-2), Deirdre Hughes (Toomevara 2-2), Claire Grogan (Cashel 1-2).

Subs used: Grainne Shanahan (Toomevara 0-1), Sheena Howard (Burgess), Niamh Harkin (Drom & Inch).

Other panel members: Trish O'Halloran (Portroe), Lorraine Bourke (Templemore), Louise Young (Toomevara), Noelette O'Dwyer (Clonoulty/Rossmore), Louise Ryan (Holycross/Ballycahill), Siobhan Ryan (Holycross/Ballycahill), Niamh Connolly (Templemore), Julie Delaney (Drom & Inch), Lena Woods (Toomevara).

2001 Junior team v Offaly: Sarah O’Brien (Drom & Inch); Sharon Ralph (Moycarkey/Borris), Helen Breen (Cashel), Deirdre McDonnell (Burgess); Maedhbh Corcoran (Moycarkey Borris), Noelette O’Dwyer (Clonoulty/Rossmore), Niamh Connolly (Templemore), Lorraine Bourke (Templemore), Julie Delaney (Drom & Inch); Trish O’Halloran (Portroe, 1-1, Capt), Louise Young (Toomevara 1-2), Helen Grogan (Cashel); Lena Woods (Toomevara 1-3), Siobhan Ryan (Holycross/Ballycahill 0-9), Linda Grogan (Cashel 1-1).

Subs used: Paula Ryan (Toomevara), Jenny O’Halloran (Portroe), Moira Ryan (Clonoulty/Rossmore), Deirdre Delaney (Drom & Inch), Mary Rose Ryan (Toomevara).

Other panel members: Norma Maher (Templemore), Sandra Ricken (Cashel), Helen Campion (Clonoulty/Rossmore), Louise Powell (Newport/Ballinahinch), Joan Ryan (Silvermines), Mary G O’Dwyer (Cashel), Sile Nash (Cashel), Geraldine Kinane (Drom & Inch).