“It’s Always A Really Tough Battle Going Into Those Games And It Does Sometimes Go Down To The Wire” – Sinead Goldrick
At the Leinster Ladies Finals launch night we caught up with Dublin’s multiple All-Star winner Sinead Goldrick to talk about tomorrow’s Leinster Final, her recent injury and just one game in Leinster just how difficult it is for Dublin to prepare for the final.
There are only two senior teams in the province at the moment so it’s straight into a Leinster final, that leads to a long gap between the end of the league and the final itself with no competitive inter-county games in between but Sinead said the Dublin club scene has given the players plenty of competitive match practice and they have returned with huge hunger and confidence.
“We have a lot of game practice at club level week on week and there’s a huge accountability and responsibility if your playing for Dublin, we want to bring our Dublin standards into our club season, so we have had a lot of match practice and there is huge hunger coming back, we were away from each other, it’s good and a lot of players have a huge sense of confidence and they are bringing that and feeding it into the team and pushing everyone.”
Dublin are aiming to win their 8th Leinster title in a row on Sunday, do they still mean as much to the players, is the hunger still there? For Sinead and her team most definitely and the All-Star states that the new players stepping up are certainly feeding into the hunger and pushing everyone to keep up the high standards Dublin have set.
“If you look at the team sheets from last year and this year there is different names there, there is different starters and they are stepping up, there’s Aoife Kane, there’s Aoife Ruthledge from Crokes, up in the forward line and midfield we have Niamh Herterton coming on and Jen Dunne, these are all names I suppose that unless your following the Dublin Ladies you might not have heard of them.
“But they are super players and they have been starting in all the league games and they have earned their spots on the team and they are pushing everyone else on.”
Dublin and Westmeath are very familiar with each other and tomorrow will see the two teams meet in the Leinster final for the fifth consecutive year. Although Dublin have won the previous meetings Sinead Goldrick is expecting a tough battle in Carlow on Sunday afternoon.
“Westmeath are a really fast running team, they have strong runners like Joanna Maher and Fiona Claffey, they play through the hand and try to get that overlap, we need to try and stop their runners.
“It’s always a really tough battle going into those games and it does sometimes go down to the wire, I think last year we pushed on in the last ten minutes and it sort of flattered the score-line in the end.
“They have got new management this year and there seemed to be an extra bite to them when we played them in the league.”
Sinead also spoke about how with tomorrow’s game Dublin’s first in this years championship it will be hard to gauge where exactly they are as a team until they take to the field, the importance of the new talent coming through particularly with the loss of some players from last years squad due to travel commitments and the season ending injury to Siobhan Killeen.
The full interview can be viewed in the video above.
