Eviston driven on by want to 'one-up' McGrath brothers

Irish Examiner

3 days ago

Mairéad Eviston watched Sunday's Tipperary spectacular from the Upper Davin. At full-time, she managed to 'weasel' her way across to the lower Hogan to congratulate and celebrate with family.
Mairéad's first cousins are the McGrath brothers. And while delighted for Noel, John, and Brian, their achievements, both individually and collectively, have significantly raised the stakes within a competitive clan.
'You'd always like to one-up each other, so credit to the boys, they've earned everything they have won and you'd be proud of them for what they have done, but I think when they win something, you're like, 'I need to one-up them here again'. It definitely drives you on,' says Tipperary camogie defender Mairéad.
Emulating that achievement, or at least remaining in a position to emulate the lads' unexpected final fantastical, requires negotiation of a semi-final fence that this Tipp camogie team have fallen at on six occasions across the last seven years.
The county, as a whole, has not successfully thrown a leg over the same fence in 19 years.
Since the 2006 All-Ireland final appearance, which was the Premier's seventh-in-a-row at the time, they've progressed to the last four of the championship eight times. All eight ended in the same outcome.
The push to bridge the gap to '06 has been sustained of late. Edging all the time closer. The 2018 semi-final involvement was the county's first in 10 years. Cork demolished them with a dozen to spare.
Over the ensuing three campaigns, the semi-final margin of defeat went from six to six to four. For the past two years, the margin was the minimum.
Nineteen minutes into the '23 semi against neighbours Waterford, they had surged seven clear. They could not hold on.
A minute shy of the regulation hour last year, they led by two. Galway had not scored in 21 minutes. But again, they could not hold on.
Eviston has been involved in the four most recent semi-final reverses. We ask her which one stands out.
'Last year's was probably the sorest,' she says. 'Having been that one point up going into injury-time and then to lose, we were really sore. We were so, so close. That was definitely the sucker punch.
'The year before, it was sore, but we got around it fairly quickly having not been there the year before that. Coming back and losing another by a point meant last year was definitely the sorest.'
The defender is adamant they are a mentally stronger bunch than 12 months ago. There's evidence of that in their response to Cork filleting them by 3-21 to 1-9 in their championship opener at home in the Ragg.
They've won their four outings since, including the All-Ireland quarter-final extra-time examination by Kilkenny.
'Two years of hurt is a good bottle of hurt to have. We've progressed an awful lot since last year. Our mindset and mental state is a lot stronger than what it was last year.
'That challenge against Kilkenny was the best thing we could have had going into a semi-final. Going to extra-time and grinding out the win was something really, really good for Tipperary camogie and something that has really driven us on going into the semi-final.'
Galway, their semi-final conquerors in 2020, '21, and '24, once again require conquering. Have the Premier women within them their own against-the-head spectacular?