Glen Dimplex All-Ireland Senior Camogie Championship quarter-final
Dublin 1-13 Kilkenny 0-12
THERE was a shock for favourites Kilkenny in Saturday’s senior camogie quarter-final in Croke Park.
Dublin, who were soundly beaten by Cork in the groups stages a fortnight ago, out-scored the 15-times champions by 0-6 to 0-2 over the last quarter to gain revenge for their Leinster final defeat in May.
The winners got a great start with late addition to the starting team, Sinéad Wylde, deftly firing the sliotar off a Kilkenny defender’s stick to the net in the fifth minute.
Dublin were 1-2 to 0-2 up with six minutes gone but then failed to score for another 21 minutes.
However, they refused to allow their opponents to stamp their authority on the game, although two points from Aoife Doyle and a third from Aoife Prendergast put the 2022 champions 0-7 to 1-2 up.
Dublin finished the half strongly with three unanswered points from Sinéad Nolan, Aisling Gannon and player-of-the-match Aisling Maher from a long range free.
Maher added two more pointed frees during the third quarter, while Kilkenny drew level on 0-10 to 1-7 with two frees from Prendergast and another point from Doyle.
You felt at that point that the tide was turning and Dublin needed a lift. They got it from their captain Maher. She pointed another long free in the 46th minute and then off-loaded for Aoife McCarney to point a minute later. Maher then hit a huge clearance for recently-introduced substitute Aisling O’Neill to put them three up.
Points from Caoimhe Keher-Murtagh and Katie Power brought the gap down to the minimum with seven minutes left, but the Dublin defence was excellent. Maher responded with a free from the side-line under the Hogan stand, O’Neill finished a good move down the middle with her second score and fittingly Maher completed the scoring with the insurance point in the third minute of added time.
Michael McCullough, who took Rossa to the All-Ireland club title 16 years ago, has been part of the Dublin coaching staff for the past two years.
“We had a number of boxes we felt we needed to tick to get Dublin up levels. We always had girls willing to work but we needed to add more weapons to the armoury,’' he said.
“Relegation last year allowed us to really develop our attack. We had a few girls return to the set-up that had missed the year before and we had a few dual players commit.
“After the other box we needed to tick was we had to beat a big team when we weren’t expected to. Today we did that. So it’s a great step forward for us.”
