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Sports Review 2023: O’Connor shoots the Déise down with quick-fire hat-trick

Cork captain took ten shots at goal and ended up with a total of 3-7 in an All-Ireland camogie final display for the ages

Amy O'Connor celebrates at the final whistle following the All-Ireland camogie final victory over Waterford at Croke Park. 2023. Photograph: Bryan Keane/Inpho
Amy O'Connor celebrates at the final whistle following the All-Ireland camogie final victory over Waterford at Croke Park. 2023. Photograph: Bryan Keane/Inpho
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Denis Walsh
Mon Dec 25 2023 - 06:00
All Ireland camogie final, August 6th: Cork 5-13 Waterford 0-9

Amy O’Connor’s third goal hit the net with 34:43 on the clock, 119 seconds after she scored her first

As a contest, the All-Ireland camogie final had been hanging by a thread at half-time but there was nothing to support its weight now.

O’Connor accepted the third pass in a cool end-to end move that started outside the Cork 20m line, and crabbed to her right until the shooting lane was clear.

“Amy O’Connor is unmarkable,” roared Marty Morrissey in the RTÉ commentary.

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Hat-tricks are rare in Gaelic games; in All-Ireland finals they’re as common as a white crow. Incredibly, a year earlier Dervla Cosgrove had scored an 84-second hat-trick for Antrim in the All-Ireland junior final, but in senior finals, the list is short.

Shane O’Donnell came up with a famous hat-trick for Clare in a hurling final 10 years ago, delivered in a leisurely 19 minutes.

The Kerry full-forward Eoin ‘Bomber’ Liston had taken 18 minutes for his hat-trick against Dublin in the 1978 All-Ireland football final. O’Connor did it in the time it takes to settle a pint of porter.

In the press conference afterwards O’Connor basically said she had lost count.

“I didn’t realise I had scored a hat-trick until someone said it to me after the match,” O’Connor said.

For the Cork captain, all of the numbers were extraordinary. From 10 shots at the target O’Connor didn’t miss once: on top of the three goals were seven points, five of them from frees.

A day before the final she went practising frees at her club grounds “and I don’t think one of them went over the bar,” she said. No one was counting.

After the match O’Connor dropped her hurley in the celebrations and it didn’t dawn on her that it was missing until it was too late. A few days later one of the Waterford selectors made contact on Facebook; her stick had washed up in their gear. He put it in the post.

Another happy ending.