Carlow ladies looking to put their All-Ireland semi-final hoodoo to bed
Ella Molly (right) celebrates with Megan Townsend (left) and Maeve O'Neill (middle) after one of the successes earlier in the year for Carlow Photo: by Tyler Miller/Sportsfile
IT is five years on the trot now. Next Sunday, Carlow travel to Parnell Park on a mission. It isn’t as if they have the Mayo curse or anything like but they have lost four All-Ireland junior football semi-finals in a row. The first time, Fermanagh dashed their hopes. Staying with Northern opposition Antrim turned them over twice in succession and in 2023 Down beat them narrowly. Now it is an all Leinster pairing with Louth standing in their way of a place in the final in Croke Park.
Rathvilly and Carlow player, Ella Molloy, is one of the young guns. It is her third year on the panel.
She has a proud football name in Rathvilly so has big shoes to fill. Paddy, her father, played senior for both club and county.
“It is in our blood,” quips Ella.
The Scoil Chonglais Leaving Certificate student turned 19 last Sunday so beating Louth would be a belated birthday present for the Rathvilly footballer. Yet she knows this will be as hard a game as they have faced all year. Carlow beat Louth in the Leinster championship but the Wee County turned over the Barrowsiders by double scores (2-10 to 1-5) in the Leinster final.
It has not been all plain sailing for Molloy.
“I badly injured my ankle in training before the league final. I played the final but that put my out of the Leinster championship. I was in rehab for nearly all that and only came on for a few minutes in the final,” she recalled.
Then there was the Leaving Certificate. In a way the absence of players indirectly helped the squad.
“A few girls were called in before the championship. Four of us were doing the Leaving Cert. Ed (Ed Burke, the manager) called in these players and there is battles for every place on the team. No-one is safe at this point. Everyone is pushing each other on. It goes from strength to strength.” Burke has been both a critic and a mentor to the team. He calls it as he sees it. He maintains that if all the Carlow players perform the way he knows they can then nothing will beat them.
“Exactly,” says Ella who accepts that now is the time.
“We have been told by so many people that it will be us who will beat ourselves.
“Two weeks ago, we went out with a bit of fear against Fermanagh. You saw what happened that day. They put us to sleep right from the start. We can’t do that next Sunday. If we do, Louth will do the exact same thing to us.
It is up to us to perform or we will leave it behind us.” According to the Rathvilly player, Ruth Bermingham the captain does most of the talking. Against Fermanagh others contributed.
“There was that fear that if we lost by thirteen points as we were at that stage, we would be knocked out of the championship. You know yourself we were never going to win the match from that point but how much could we pull it back. We had to pull that score difference down and hope everything else would go our way. We said we would go for it.” None of the Carlow players need reminding that they lost to Louth in the Leinster JFC final “We didn’t have the correct mind-set. We had beaten Louth in the group stages but that day every 50-50 ball, Louth won it. We were nowhere. They had more aggression. They wanted it more than us. They had the hunger for it. We didn’t have the little bit of bite to come back and we let it go.” She doesn’t have to think about what her career highlight.
“Winning the league. Such a big thing for Carlow to win and be promoted. The feeling after is driving us on. We want that feeling again. We are not going to let anything go. We know what we can do,” says Molloy.
Carlow v Louth Parnell Park, Sunday, 4pm
Fermanagh v Limerick, Glennon Brothers Pearse Park, Longford, 2pm
