What was that quote in Peter Pan about goodbyes?
“Never say goodbye because saying goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting.”
Everyone around Mayo are praying that Sunday isn’t the last that they’ve seen of Cora Staunton. Every GAA fan is hoping that they’ll see her grace a local pitch again.
She’ll be back for her club, more than likely anyway, but we won’t know until March if Staunton will line out again for her county.
It was an eventful year for the Carnacon woman. She reached an All-Ireland final with Mayo but lost. She picked up her 11th All-Star too. On Sunday, she won her All-Ireland.
In short, Cora Staunton is a great player – perhaps the greatest to ever play, but she’s off to tog out with GWS Giants in Australian Rules and won’t be back ’til March.
Their gain is Ireland’s loss because, game after game, Staunton always produces. Yet again, in another campaign, she’d been racking up an incredible scoring tally as Carnacon won the 2017 All-Ireland Club Championship. The final proved no different as the 34-year-old hit another seven scores.
Her tally on the road to the final was absolutely crazy.
- 4-13 vs Kilkerrin-Clonberne in drawn Connacht final
- 1-6 vs Kilkerrin-Clonberne in the Connacht final replay
- 1-7 vs St MacCartan’s in the All-Ireland semi-final
- 0-7 vs Mourneabbey in the All-Ireland final
In total, over the last four games, Cora Staunton has scored 6-33. A grand total of 51 points.
In comparison, throughout the summer some of the top names in the country would have been proud of them figures.
- Dean Rock scored 3-31
- Conor McManus scored 2-31
- Andy Moran scored 3-24
- Paul Geaney scored 1-29
All of them scored less in the entirety of the summer than Staunton did over the past four games. In fact, the only player that scored more than Staunton this year was Cillian O’Connor, with his 3-66 tally over 10 games.
Carnacon came out victors in a scoreline of 0-15 to 1-10 in a closely contested battle in Parnell Park and the victory meant that it was the club’s sixth All-Ireland crown having previously won it in 2013.
For the losers, it was Mourneabbey’s third loss in four years. Today wasn’t to be their day. It was always going to be Cora’s.
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