AISLING O’Driscoll is backing Enniskeane to pull off a shock win in the county senior camogie championship this Saturday.
The Carbery team takes on one of the competition’s heavyweights, Inniscarra, in a round-four clash at Coachford (4.30pm throw-in).
Inniscarra were beaten senior finalists last season and before that dominated to win three-in-a-row (2016-18) so Enniskeane, in their first season in the senior ranks, have it all to do.
But 2020 county intermediate champions Enniskeane are embracing the challenge, as vice captain O’Driscoll told this week’s Star Sport Podcast.
‘We don’t want our campaign to end on Saturday,’ she said.
‘Inniscarra were finalists last year so this won’t be easy and it will be challenge but if we play to our potential we can get over the line.’
Enniskeane have been buoyed by their 0-23 to 1-10 win against Douglas in the last round. That was the Carbery side’s first-ever senior camogie championship game and they were in at the deep end, against 2020 semi-finalists Douglas, but Enniskeane passed that test with flying colours. That’s a huge confidence-booster.
‘It was brilliant,’ O’Driscoll said.
‘For the younger girls, to come up and have that as our first senior match, it’s great to have that behind us. We played well as a team but there are things that we are working on for the next match. It showed us that we can play senior hurling and we need to use that confidence and build on it.’
Tara Sheehan led the line against Douglas and scored 0-7, Cork senior Orla Cronin chipped in with 0-6 while Eimear O’Brien added 0-4. In fact, all six Enniskeane forward were on target that day, as Sinead Hurley, Lauren Corcoran and Orla Coughlan also scored, too.
It was the ideal introduction to life in the senior championship for a team that has worked incredibly hard to climb out of the intermediate grade. They lost the 2017 and 2019 intermediate finals, both times to neighbours Newcestown, but it was third time lucky last year when they beat Aghabullogue in the county decider.
‘In our eyes we feel we should have been up senior a few years ago. We know we are capable of playing at this level so we want to show that we can play here and we want to build on it,’ O’Driscoll said.
‘We have had our heartbreaks at intermediate, we were there or thereabouts for a while, and that drove us on to get out of there. We knew what the heartache was like and last year we didn’t want to leave it behind us.’
Now that they have earned their place in the top tier Enniskeane are determined to make their mark, and they now have Inniscarra in their sights this Saturday.
