LAURA Power prepared for this interview by reading a chapter of Relentless, the brilliant book by Mary White that revealed the inside story on the Cork ladies football team that dominated for over a decade.
‘I needed to jog my memory,’ Laura says, ‘It feels like such a long time ago. Twenty years.
‘It’s very surreal, almost like it was someone else’s life – and I know that sounds bizarre.’
These days Laura lives in Irvinestown, county Fermanagh. It’s where her husband Conor is from, and with their two kids – four-year-old Shay and Theo who turns one this week – this is home now. It’s a seven-hour drive from Castletownbere, so locals in Irvinestown can be forgiven for not realising Laura’s role in helping the Cork ladies football juggernaut pick up speed in the mid-noughties.
‘I have just started to play football here in Fermanagh, with the local club St Molaise, and someone asked me where I was from, so I said Cork. They were like “wow, that Cork team”, but I wasn’t going to say I was part of that because that’s not how we were reared and brought up,’ Laura says.
It’s 20 years since Cork won the national league Division 1 title for the first time, beating defending All-Ireland champions Galway 2-13 to 0-6 at the Gaelic Grounds – that first senior national title was a spark. A few months later Eamonn Ryan’s rising stars were All-Ireland champions for the first time. These relentless Rebels won 11 of the 12 All-Ireland senior titles between ’05 and 2016. Incredible dominance. There’s a familiarity to the names on the Cork team-sheet from the 2005 league final against Galway. Elaine Harte. Rena Buckley. Briege Corkery. Valerie Mulcahy. Angela Walsh. Nollaig Cleary. Juliet Murphy. Deirdre O’Reilly. Geraldine O’Flynn. All to become legends. Laura Power’s name is there too; the 17-year-old came on as a sub that day. There was another Castletownbere connection, 15-year-old Amanda Murphy who kicked three points in that league final. Claire O’Donoghue, 18 at the time, was another Beara footballer involved, as the back-up goalkeeper, though she’s a Leap native; her club Kilmacabea had no ladies football set-up back then so Claire joined Beara football to follow her dream.
Laura and Amanda shared similar dreams, too, and they travelled together to and from Cork senior training on Wednesday nights, often held in The Farm in the city or in Donoughmore. They’d leave after a day of school at Scoil Phobail Bhéara, pick up bread rolls and hot chicken and make sandwiches in the car on the long drive to training.
‘Coming from Beara and trying to play for Cork, that takes commitment,’ Laura adds, but the Castletownbere teenagers were moving in the right direction. Stepping up to senior felt like the next natural step for Laura who had enjoyed incredible underage success with Cork football. In 2004, as a 16-year-old, she was crowned Munster Ladies Young Footballer of the Year. By that stage this highly-rated defender had won two All-Ireland minor titles, two All-Ireland U16 crowns and three All-Ireland U14 titles. Player of the match in the 2002 All-Ireland U14 final. She was trending upwards, just like Cork ladies football.
‘I realised at minor that this was a special group but we never really knew it would translate to a senior All-Ireland,’ Laura recalls.
‘This wasn’t an overnight success story, the groundwork was going on in the background. Bríd Stack, Rena Buckley, Catriona Foley, all those players, we just moved up the ranks together.’
The next step was always going to be hardest: from underage talent to a regular at senior level in a team at a time when the standard was rising.
‘I was always a corner back. Always number four. But the competition was huge. Bríd Stack. Ciara Walsh. Niamh Keohane. On Bríd, I was watching the Laochra Gael show about her lately, and going back to when I was involved I was up against her for a place on the team,’ Laura muses.
‘I remember the first year we won and I really felt it was one of my best years playing but I just never made it.
‘A huge sense of pride, definitely, to be involved in a group like that. There is this element of disappointment that I didn’t quite make the teams for the All-Irelands – I never got my moment in the sun, I suppose.
‘Maybe I got a small bit disheartened when I was pipped for a spot, but looking back I definitely treasure and feel very proud to be part of that group.’
There’s the bigger picture here, Laura explains. She’s entitled to feel like it was a missed opportunity, given how close she came to earning a regular spot on the greatest ladies football team of all time, but the Beara woman was part of something much, much bigger. The success of that group transformed ladies football in the county and beyond.
‘In so many ways it was a dream come true – we went from nobodies to celebs in a short time. A whirlwind is the best way to describe it. I remember the drive into the Croke Park for an All-Ireland final, the crowds parting in front of you as the bus came through. Just great memories,’ she says.
‘I felt I had two good years, and these are some of the best memories of my life. I don’t know if I finished the third year…
‘I had a knee injury in 2009 and that finished me off really.’
There are more chapters to Laura’s football career post-Cork. She played with Fr Murphy’s in London for a spell, and also the London team in the All-Ireland championship. It’s in her DNA. It’s why she’s training now up in Irvinestown.
‘Football is everything to everyone in Castletownbere,’ she explains, and her mother Mary Power is a great example – she has been a driving force in Beara ladies football decade after decade.
‘We were a football mad house, my brother and three sisters all played too. Dinner never happened at six o’clock because someone was always training, so we worked our lives around football. Mom was a huge influence, she took us to wherever we needed to be. Football was ingrained in us from the start.’
Laura still remembers the first time she played with the Cork seniors – it was in 2002 when she was just 14 years old and the county needed players to field a team.
‘They didn’t have enough players so mom pulled me out of bed to make 15 – and that’s how I started,’ Laura says, and she played against Meath in a Division 1 league relegation play-off that Cork lost. Times were tougher then, but the wheel turned fast and three years later Laura, now 17, helped the Rebels win the Division 1 title for the first time. She can always take huge satisfaction and pride from her role in the rise of Cork football, playing alongside some of the best to ever play the game. Look at the 2006 league final when Cork beat Meath, Laura started at corner back in a defence that included Bríd Stack, Annie Walsh, Briege Corkery and Rena Buckley, with Elaine Harte in goal. That’s the company Laura kept, and the heights she reached. Maybe now this story will travel to Irvinestown and the locals will know they have a trailblazer in their ranks.
