JOE BROLLY: Cora, Cora, Cora – the influence of Cora Staunton

AT the weekend, we brought our 14 day old to Knockmore to meet her people. On Sunday morning, we strapped her into her carrier and walked up to the pitch for the Senior Ladies Championship semi-final against Carnacon.

The Knockmore girls are the county champions. They are also the league champions, having won that in a most entertaining final a few weeks ago. For Sunday, they were strong favourites. There was a ‘but’. Cora Staunton, aged 42, was back from Aussie Rules and turning out at number 14 for Carnacon.

For 25 years since her senior debut with them, she has been their best player, and for much of that time the best player in Ireland. On Sunday morning, in spite of Knockmore’s youth and adventure and overwhelming superiority, Cora refused to bow the knee. She battled and fought and urged her team on and kicked a string of glorious points that would have been glorious in the men’s semi-final. One early in the second half was taken from just inside the 45, with no backlift and no chance for the block.

Singlehandedly, she made what ought to have been an easy passage for Knockmore into a most uneasy one. When she set up a Carnacon goal midway through the second half, the deficit was reduced to four points, with Knockmore facing a powerful gale. We held on, but afterwards, as is often the case when a truly great player has played, the talk in a very happy Knockmore clubhouse (it is always very happy to be fair) was of Cora.

Stephen ‘Nipper’ Barrett, the most fashionable man in Knockmore (he walks with a slight swagger, with the air of a man who is being paraded through the parish behind a brass band) handed me a stout as I sat down. “She is a hard woman,” he said, sipping his pint. “She is,” I said. We agreed that if she had been born a man, Mayo would not have lost all those All-Ireland finals.

She would have been the missing ingredient. The driving force. The winner they were so badly lacking. Three All-Irelands with Mayo. Six All-Irelands with her club Carnacon, probably the greatest club team in the history of ladies football, revolving around the game’s greatest ever player. Those last five minutes where the boys wilted in multiple All-Irelands must have been a mystery to Cora, who specialised in nailing the coffin of opponents on the biggest occasion.

“A winner,” I said, “like Roy Keane, or Henry Downey, or Philly McMahon. Driven. Obsessed.” I made the point that like all of the greatest winners, she takes it personally. There is no philosophical shrug of the shoulders or talk of this “just being a game.” To Cora, the old GAA adage “win lose or draw, we are all in this together” must seem ridiculous. She hates losing. Even on Sunday morning against our vibrant young team, she huffed and roared and urged on her team mates and kicked points from every angle, raging against the dying of the light.

When ‘Nipper’ was taking this Knockmore ladies team they were just starting out. They were already an exciting, interesting group full of characters, beating everyone they played. Except Carnacon, who were the undisputed Queens of Mayo football, with 20 senior titles in a row. Nipper tells this story:

“We played very well against them. It was a massive battle. In the end, they beat us by a point, 1-14 to 1-13. Cora scored the killer goal. Cora scored 1-12 from their 1-14. I was gutted but proud of the girls and at the final whistle I walked across the pitch applauding them and congratulating them on a great effort. Suddenly, Cora was coming towards me. I put out my hand to congratulate her and she said to me: “Don’t clap them. Don’t congratulate them. They are losers. You are setting a bad example. Clap them when they win.” I was speechless. I walked off shaking my head.”

Winners. Who can understand them?