‘Everyone is in shock after this win’ – Gaultier captain Mollie Comerford

Gaultier captain Molly Comerford was in disbelief as she hoisted the Edith Kennedy Cup aloft after their famous win over Ballymacarbry on Friday night.

The 21-year-old kicked 0-2 en route to victory and found it difficult to sum up the emotions at play once the final whistle had sounded.

“I don’t think you can put it into words - it’s a really hard feeling to describe”, said Comerford. “Everyone’s in shock at the minute - I think it’ll take a little bit to sink in! It’s a mix of relief, excitement - I just can’t believe it really.” 

Comerford paid tribute to manager Paul Fitzgerald, who has worked with many of the group since they were 10 years old, and she says the level of commitment shown by the panel this year was second to none.

“Paul’s had to put up with an awful lot from us over the years. To be fair, he’s the one who’s always told us that if we put our mind to it that we can achieve something like this. This year, we just decided that this was the year to go for it with the panel we had and the group of young girls that came in and we didn’t change too much - just really decided to knuckle down and now we’re very grateful that we did.” 

Controlling the controllable was key to Gaultier’s success, and once they had assumed early momentum - Comerford believes it was a case of remaining composed, and thankfully for them - they never looked back.

“We knew we couldn’t control too much about how Ballymacarbry play or the football went on but we could control how hard that we worked - and we did that from the start. We hunted in packs, turned over balls that maybe we wouldn’t have turned over in other years and we just really went at it, played aggressive football and it really paid off.”