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By Daire Walsh
In a month where her alma mater had two teams competing in major deciders, Cork’s Rosie Corkery acknowledges playing college football in UCC has played a significant part in developing her game on the inter-county stage.
At the DCU Sportsgrounds last Sunday afternoon, the Leeside university’s camogie side secured the Ashbourne Cup title with a magnificent 2-15 to 0-7 triumph over UCD. Three days later, their men’s football team found themselves in nearby Croke Park for a Sigerson Cup final tussle with Munster rivals University of Limerick – a game that finished 0-17 to 1-11 in favour of UL.
Meanwhile, the college’s ladies footballers have been accustomed to challenging at the business end of the AIG O’Connor Cup in recent times with Corkery featuring in showpiece affairs for UCC in 2022, 2024 and 2025. The latter year coincided with her securing a regular starting spot on the Cork senior team under Joe Carroll – who was also her manager in UCC – and she believes the standard of the college game was a big help in this regard.
“The speed of the inter-county game and the calibre of it is definitely a step up. I suppose a good bridge there for myself and a good few of the rest of the girls was playing college football. That can be a great bridge,” Corkery explained.
“There’s a lot of inter-county players playing college football. We played with UCC a lot of us and you’re getting a great mix there of different inter-county girls playing together against an opposition of strong inter-county players as well. That was probably a good bridge for myself and a few girls that are in my age group on the team as well.”
ASBOURNE SUCCESS
Although she and UCC came close on each occasion – the 2024 decider against DCU Dóchas Éireann went to extra-time – Corkery ultimately missed out on an AIG O’Connor Cup crown during her time as a third-level student.
A little over a month before the Cork outfit also lost out to DCU in an O’Connor showpiece at Queen’s University in Belfast last March, UCC suffered a two-point defeat to University of Limerick in an Ashbourne Cup final at the Connacht GAA Centre of Excellence.
There were a small selection of players who were involved in both squads during 2025 and while Corkery herself graduated in May of last year, some of her former colleagues featured in north Dublin last weekend when UCC bagged their first Ashbourne Cup success since 2003.
Suffice to say, Corkery was thrilled to see these players – as well as the wider squad itself – getting their hands on coveted silverware in DCU.
“I was absolutely delighted for the Ashbourne girls. It was some win for them and it was a comprehensive win as well. There’d be a good few girls with an overlap there with O’Connor Cup and Cork.
“You’d the likes of Aoife Healy and Leah Hallihan, and then Sarah O’Brien as well from Limerick. She would have played O’Connor Cup with us in college. I was absolutely delighted for the girls, going to get a bit of silverware into UCC.”
‘LOAD MANAGEMENT’
Having spent five years in UCC studying dentistry, Corkery now finds herself being employed in this particular field – splitting her time between locations in Ballincollig and Killarney. While the polished wing-back does have a considerable workload that she combines with her duties as a footballer with Cork and her home club of Naomh Abán, she had an even finer balance to strike throughout her time as a college student.
“I started working there at the end of the summer. I’m really enjoying it. I suppose a big switch up from being in college. My course was five years. It’s a very intense course in general, but fourth and fifth year was very intense. We had a lot of exams. Trying to juggle football and social life, and trying to get in a part-time job there as well.
“There’s a lot of juggling going on, but credit where credit is due to the inter-county managers I had at the time and the UCC managers I had as well. I’d often have days off training or whatever and they’d be so understanding.
“It was good to have the bit of football there as well to take my mind off the college when I could. When you know you have to study for a few hours and you can go away to training, it’s definitely good for load management of study and load management of football as well.”
WEEKEND TIE
By lining out for Cork at the Senior grade, Corkery has followed in the footsteps of her brother Tadhg – who featured for the Rebel County in the 2020 Munster Senior football championship final and also won a National Football League Division Three crown in the same year.
Having cemented a starting berth in 2025, Rosie has also been a prominent figure thus far this year for Cork in Division 1 of the Lidl National Football League. After playing her part from left half-back when the Leesiders drew with Kildare in an opening round encounter at MTU Cork on January 25, she was named in the same position for a subsequent victory over Galway at Páirc Uí Rinn seven days later.
She and Cork had been due to face Armagh in Dromintee last weekend, but an unplayable pitch at St Patrick’s means these counties will now face each other at St Oliver Plunkett Park in Crossmaglen tomorrow at 1pm.
Greg McGonigle’s charges are set to provide a stern test of Cork this weekend and on their return to the top-tier in the aftermath of a successful NFL Division 2 promotion campaign in 2025, Corkery readily admits there are no easy games at this level.
“We were happy to get out of Division Two last year. We were looking forward to playing the top teams up in Division One. It’s a good prep for championship. These are the teams we’ll be meeting again,” Corkery added.
“We’ll just take every game as it comes. We’ll be meeting Dublin, Kerry, Meath, Armagh. We’ve yet to play all them. They’ll definitely all be big challenges for us to face and hopefully we’ll take a few learnings from each game.”
