ANTRIM camogie star Caitrín Dobbin hopes that they can fare at least as well as last year in their imminent All-Ireland campaign.
The Saffrons get their campaign underway this weekend at home to a Derry side that they recently overcame in a hotly contested Ulster Senior Championship final showdown, and Dobbin hopes that it’s a repeat result against the Oakleafers.
Looking further down the line, the aim is to get to the knock-out rounds and make amends for a disappointing All-Ireland quarter-final performance against Tipperary, where they lost heavily last year on a scoreline of 3-23 to 0-6.
“We’ll take it one step at a time,” said Dobbin, “but we’d like to get back to the same stage as last year. We got to the All-Ireland quarter-final and I don’t think we really did ourselves justice on the day.”
There are three Ulster teams fielding in the All-Ireland Senior Championship this year with Derry making the big step up following their Intermediate success of last year. Dobbin acknowledges that it reflects well on the overall strength of Ulster camogie.
“It’s good to have another team competing at this level. For a few years it seemed to be Down that were always dominating. We’ve made good strides ourselves and Derry are now competing at Senior level. Hopefully it sets a good example to the rest of the teams in Ulster, that we have the ability to mix it with the top teams in the country.”
Antrim endured a turbulent start to the season but they’ve steadied the ship, maintaining their Division 1B status and they claimed provincial honours on a scoreline of 1-11 to 0-11 against Derry, making amends for last year’s defeat to a Niamh Mallon inspired Down team.
Dobbin said: “We were chuffed to get the Ulster title, and you can tell by the scoreline that it was a good, tough game. It was good preparation going into the All-Ireland campaign. It was great to win it back after losing to Down last year.”
Derry are managed by Dobbin’s Loughgiel clubmate PJ O’Mullan. He’s in his second season in charge of the Oak Leafers and they’ve made serious progress in that time, and he also has the inside track on Antrim’s Loughgiel contingent.
“PJ coached us in Loughgiel for a good few years. He knows a lot about the club obviously, but he’ll also know about the other Antrim girls from coaching and managing in the county.”
In time, Dobbin will switch her attention back to the club scene. Loughgiel played second fiddle to Sleacht Néill for years, but they managed to get over the line in the Ulster final two years back and they’ve been massively competitive on the national stage. The ultimate goal is to get over the line in an All-Ireland final.
Dobbin said: “They must’ve beaten us about six years in a row. A few of those games went to a replay, it was so tight between us.
“I think it was a mental battle for us, we were maybe scared to get beaten as opposed to focusing on winning. It’s been brilliant to win two Ulster titles but we’re disappointed we haven’t reached the end goal and hopefully we can do so.”
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