By Daire Walsh

The 2023 season was an unforgettable one for her at club level and as she now stands on the brink of an historic appearance in the knockout rounds of the Wexford LGFA Senior Football Championship, inter-county star Aoife Cullen is loving life at the heart of the Gusserane attack.

Following a heartbreaking loss to St Martin’s in a final replay back in 2022, Gusserane returned to the same stage of the Stafford’s Bakeries intermediate football championship on the Slaneyside 12 months later. Remarkably, a second game was once again required to produce a winner of Wexford’s second tier, but on this occasion the O’Rahilly View outfit emerged victorious against Baile Dubh Tire on a score of 4-7 to 2-6.

In addition to securing a precious piece of silverware, this triumph saw Gusserane book their spot in the Roban Financial Senior Championship for the very first time. While the fact that only eight teams are in the competition meant they were always guaranteed a spot in the quarter-finals, two wins from three games in Group B – an opening reversal to Shelmalier was followed by consecutive successes over Crossabeg Ballymurn and St Martin’s – means last year’s intermediate winners will have home advantage in their knockout duel with Adamstown this evening (throw-in 7.30pm).

“When we first got the fixtures and we had the Shels in the first round, it made us realise that it would be an eye opener for us. That’s the standard we need to get to play senior football in Wexford, because they’ve won it so many times,” Cullen acknowledged.

“The other two matches, the second one was a close one, we only won by a point. Then the third match, we started to find our gears as a team together and we got over the line by a good bit more.

“I know the last couple of years we were in intermediate and never got over the line. When we won it last year, it was just outstanding to get to senior. Especially for some of the older girls that have been there for so long. Just to get there for them was unbelievable and thankfully it is going alright for us this year so far.”

A Wexford senior panellist since 2021, Cullen was instrumental in getting Gusserane over the line in last year’s intermediate championship showpiece as she registered an impressive tally of 2-1 from left half-forward. From there, she went on to kick six points from frees as the Slaneysiders overcame Meath’s Walterstown in the Leinster junior club championship decider.

Cullen’s scoring contribution to both final triumphs (as well as a variety of games en route to those encounters) was significant, but she is very quick to credit her team-mates for the work they produced in Gusserane’s memorable 2023 odyssey.

“I get most of the scores because of the frees, but all the rest of the girls do so much work to get us up into the forwards. It’s unbelievable that we can even get the scores and get such high scoring games, and we’re not all defensive and trying to just stop other teams from playing. We can go out and play our own game of football.

“Our main focus last year was to win the county title, seeing as we’d lost it the year before after a replay. Then when we managed to get the whole way to Leinster, we kind of just took each match in Leinster as a bonus.

“Then when we won the Leinster final, it was unbelievable. The amount of support in the club and the amount of people that came to watch us play was unbelievable.”

While it was always going to be difficult to match what happened last year, the opening half of 2024 proved to be quite a productive one for Cullen. Back on March 9 at MTU Cork, Cullen appeared as an extra-time substitute in DCU Dóchas Éireann’s Ladies HEC O’Connor Cup final victory against UCC.

Fast forward a little over two months to the TG4 Leinster Intermediate Football Championship decider at Laois Hire O’Moore Park on May 19 and Cullen scored 0-8 in a player of the match display as Wexford got the better of Westmeath at Laois Hire O’Moore Park.

Including amongst her haul was a late pointed free that helped Lizzy Kent’s charges to edge out the challenge of their Lake County rivals. This excellent performance played a major part in Cullen securing The Croke Park Hotel/LGFA Player of the Month Award for May – though she was taken by surprise when news came through that she had been honoured.

“I was a bit shocked when I got a message about it! I wasn’t expecting it, to say the least. I’m glad to have some sort of trophy, just for myself. My parents love it more than I do at this moment and time. I’m still playing, so hopefully there’ll be more to come,” Cullen said.

As well as representing her county’s first Leinster intermediate title since 2019, that win over Westmeath saw Cullen picking up her first piece of silverware in the Wexford colours.

She came off the bench in the TG4 All-Ireland intermediate football championship finals of 2021 and 2022, but the Slaneysiders lost out to the aforementioned Westmeath and Laois in those respective showpieces. An intermediate semi-final defeat followed against Kildare in 2023 and despite a gallant fightback, Wexford also fell short to Leitrim in the penultimate phase of the second-tier championship in July of this year.

The fact that Kildare and Leitrim went on to be crowned All-Ireland intermediate champions in the wake of those clashes shows that Wexford aren’t too far off a breakthrough into the senior grade, but Cullen acknowledged there is still plenty of work to do in this regard.

“The last two years we’ve lost to the eventual winners. Next year obviously, as long as everyone comes back, we’ll be hoping to build on that. I know the group that are there, we do want to win the All-Ireland and we want to get the medal, but it’s just going to take a lot more work to get us over the line. We just need to put in that extra bit of work to get there,” Cullen added.

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