By Daire Walsh 

As she gets set to feature in Aghada’s first-ever Senior ‘A’ Championship final at MTU, former Cork star Róisín Phelan has said that getting a chance to focus solely on club football in 2024 has proven to be ‘a breath of fresh air’.

Having first arrived on the scene as a teenager in 2012, Phelan officially announced her inter-county retirement in March of this year. She had previously taken a break from the Rebelettes squad in 2019 — when she was working in Dublin and lining out for the Castleknock-based St Brigid’s.

Yet when she last donned the red of Cork in a TG4 All-Ireland SFC semi-final defeat to Dublin in July 2023, Phelan was back playing club football with Aghada and working locally at Corabbey Dental & Orthodontics in Midleton. The 2018 TG4 All-Star was subsequently eager to continue togging out for Aghada in the wake of stepping away from the county panel and will proudly lead out the side as captain in their top-tier showdown with Ëire Óg this weekend.

“It has been a breath of fresh air really. I guess I played inter-county for an awfully long time and the body starts to creek a little bit after a while. When you come back into club football after playing inter-county all year, you feel like you’re permanently attached to the physio bed,” Phelan explained.

“It has been nice. A bit more relaxed this year and I think it has given my body a new lease of life. I’m feeling pretty good. There’s great excitement in and around the parish. It’s the first Senior ‘A’ final that our club has been involved in, in any code. It’s a proud day for the parish.”

Considering she had been a part of the set-up for so long, Phelan admitted it wasn’t an easy decision to call time on her inter-county career with Cork. That said, she hasn’t regretted making the choice that she did and is grateful for all that she experienced with the Leesiders under the managements of the late Eamonn Ryan, Ephie Fitzgerald and Shane Ronayne.

“I called Shane last November to retire and I guess I probably had been thinking about it for a while, but it’s very different thinking about it and actually making that phone call. Thankfully I haven’t regretted it.

“I had a great time playing and I don’t regret the years that I did play, but it has been nice to give other areas of my life a little bit more attention recently. I’m really thankful for all the memories and all the experiences I had through it, but I’m comfortable where I’m at, at the moment.”

During her time with Cork, Phelan achieved remarkable success – winning five TG4 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship crowns, while also accumulating the same number of Lidl National Football League Division 1 titles. Like most of those who represented the county in this era, the magnificent comeback victory against Dublin in the 2014 All-Ireland decider (her first Brendan Martin Cup final as a starter) was a career highlight for Phelan.

She has also tasted success with Aghada in the past, winning the full complement of Cork, Munster and All-Ireland championships at the junior grade in 2017 before also securing an intermediate county title 12 months later. Phelan has an opportunity to add significantly to those triumphs in MTU tomorrow and she acknowledged club success ranks up there with some of her best achievements in a Cork jersey.

“I think winning with the club is special. There is something very different about it. These are people you’ve grown up with and who’ve seen you at your best and your worst.

“They’ve helped you through personal problems and who you have helped through personal issues. I think there is something really special about that. It would definitely be pretty high up there if we managed to get over the line.”

Standing between Aghada and their quest for a maiden Cork Senior ‘A’ Championship success will be a side that are no strangers to this stage of the competition. In each of the past three years, the Knockanemore club have finished runners-up to the all-conquering Mourneabbey – whose early exit from the 2024 championship threw the competition wide open.

In addition to current Cork football panellists Sadbh McGoldrick, Emma Cleary and Shauna Cronin, Eire Og is also the home club of Orlaith and Meabh Cahalane – camogie colleagues of Aghada’s dual inter-county star Hannah Looney – and Phelan is fully aware of the threats they possess as a result.

“They’re an excellent team, everyone knows that. They’ve had three finals in-a-row. There’ll be a huge hunger there for them to win, having come up short against Mourneabbey in those matches. We’re well used to playing against them.

“Hopefully we’ll come out the right side of it, but we’re under no illusions about how hard that is going to be. Obviously there’s a good few of us now who have played inter-county for a few years, so I’m sure we know as much about them as they do about us.”

Despite losing considerable experience in the form of Phelan, the three O’Sullivan sisters – Ciara, Doireann and Meabh - their namesake Brid O’Sullivan, Laura Fitzgerald and Eimear Meaney for a variety of reasons, Cork managed to reach a second successive All-Ireland semi-final in their absences this year.

The Leesiders’ championship ultimately came to an end at the hands of Galway, but Phelan remains optimistic about their future. The former defender (who has been playing in a more advanced midfield role for Aghada this year) feels there is more than enough talent spread across the various levels of Cork football to catch the eye of Shane Ronayne’s eventual successor as Rebelettes boss.

“There’s a great young crop coming through our club and I’m sure it’s the same with Eire Og and you saw how well Glanmire (their semi-final opponents) were set up the last time. They’ve a lot of young players as well. That’s only talking about senior teams,” Phelan added.

“That’s not even talking about the lower divisions that are coming through. Whoever is taking over that job next, I’m sure they’ll have plenty of game tape to be going through to figure out who they want to get involved and who they don’t.”

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