‘Tradition’ – The Big Interview with Limerick’s Cathy Mee

On a weekend when her county’s senior hurlers will be looking to add another All-Ireland title to their growing list of honours, Limerick ladies footballer Cathy Mee is hoping to take a big step towards doing the same this afternoon.

By DAIRE WALSH

Back in 2018, Mee captained the Treaty women as they overcame Louth on a scoreline of 5-6 to 0-8 in the TG4 All-Ireland junior football championship decider. A native of Ballyorgan – who plays at club level for nearby Ballylanders in south county Limerick – she remarkably became the first player from her parish to claim an All-Ireland winner’s medal in more than a century.

Back on November 20, 1898, the Flynn brothers, Paddy and Maurice, from the townland of Clovers, were on the first Limerick team (represented by the Kilfinane club) to win an All-Ireland senior hurling title. In the delayed final of the 1897 championship, the Munster champions got the better of Kilkenny, the same county who stand in the way of Limerick’s current crop in their quest for a fourth successive Liam MacCarthy Cup at GAA HQ tomorrow.

Meanwhile, relegated from the TG4 All-Ireland intermediate championship in 2019, Limerick will be competing at the semi-final stage of the JFC for the fourth time in as many years at Glennon Brothers Pearse Park today. Their opponents, Fermanagh, defeated them in the last-four of the 2020 and 2022 championships, but Mee isn’t overly fixated with those reversals.

“They fairly hammered us in the semi-final last year. We struggled to figure out what exactly went wrong that day, but Fermanagh were brilliant on the day as well. In fairness to them, they were a very strong team. We kind of have to just leave that behind us now as well,” Mee said in advance of a game that was moved from its original Sunday slot to ensure it didn’t clash with the All-Ireland hurling final.

“We can’t really look too much into last year’s result. We just have to take this game in its own right and we’re definitely hoping to be putting in a better performance than we would at last year’s semi-final stage.”

In addition to manager John Kiely and coach Paul Kinnerk, renowned sport psychologist Caroline Currid has been highly praised for the work she has done behind the scenes with the Limerick hurlers.

Ladies boss Graham Shine is also calling upon the services of an expert in this particular field and it is someone that is well known both inside and outside of the county. A former radio and television presenter with RTE who worked on shows like The Den and Winning Streak, Geri Maye graduated from University of Limerick in 2020 with a masters in psychology, specialising in sport and performance psychology.

She also worked with the Limerick men’s senior footballers this year and as someone who is a strong advocate of sport psychology – and remembers when Maye was a regular fixture on television screens – Mee was thrilled to see her coming on board.

“I’m not sure if some of the girls would have known her that well, but there’s definitely some of us that would have. There was a joke there for a while, because we thought her name was actually Geri Maye, whereas Maye is actually just her surname! Everyone was going around calling her Geri Maye as her first name, which is a bit embarrassing.

“She has been in with us every so often. She is coming in this week as well and she has been very good. She’s absolutely lovely. I personally would think that the sports psychology side of things is very important. In regards to confidence and just building resilience and things like that. She has been working with us a bit around that and we’ve found it very helpful.”

Having previously been deployed in a deeper role, Mee has been part of the Limerick attack in more recent times. She has scored 4-6 in just three games to date in their All-Ireland JFC campaign with the attacking style favoured by former Kerry manager Shine playing substantially to her strengths.

“I got a couple of handy goals I would say as well over that time. I’m enjoying it this year. We have a good, strong team and we’re a very attacking team, which is enjoyable to play in. I wouldn’t always have considered myself a forward over the years.

“It’s a position I’ve grown into more over the last couple of years. Whoever scores is good for the team, but obviously it’s good to get the confidence up with a few scores as well. Hopefully that can continue.”

Such has been the change in playing personnel since Limerick’s All-Ireland JFC final triumph of 2018, that Mee and current team captain Roisin Ambrose are the only starters from that game who were also in the first 15 for their recent group stage loss to Down on July 9 in Newcastle West.

A number of players from that national success opted out of the panel for a variety of reasons and Mee did the same herself in 2021. A social worker focusing on the area of child protection, Mee took a step back from the inter-county scene in a bid to regain her enjoyment for the game that she believed had been lost to some degree.

She continued to play club football for the aforementioned Ballylanders during this period and eventually felt ready to make a return for Limerick in 2022.

“I just felt at that time, things were just mental busy really from a personal point of view. I felt as well those years after being captain, it had been time consuming and there had been a lot involved in it. I didn’t feel I was enjoying it as much as I should have been,” Mee added.

“I just wanted to take a step back and be able to get that enjoyment back. Just concentrate on club. I did that and I think sometimes actually you do need to do that, if you have a lot on.

“Because obviously you get into football because you love it and because you enjoy it. It can be serious at times, but you want to always have that enjoyment when you’re playing, or else what is the point really?”