"Obviously, ladies football have to answer the question - to Dublin and our players and their families who have sacrificed as much as the girls have - why do we not have Hawk-Eye? This isn't to take anything away from Cork. They are great champions. From a management point of view, when you have the technology in place, why don't you use it?" Fundamentally, I believe our ladies association have let us down."

Dublin manager Gregory McGonigle didn't mince his words.

"It went in front of Central Council, whether or not to use Hawk-Eye, earlier on this year. The decision was taken that in order to have a level playing field for all teams playing on all fields throughout the country, throughout the championship, that we wouldn't use Hawk-Eye. It's a size four - it's different to what the men use. We would have to reconfigure the whole system."

An LGFA spokesperson gave their side of the story.

"I said earlier in the week, if you look at Roy Keane as an analogy in terms of his massive will to win, total focus…United were lucky to have Keane - we have nine or ten of them. There's never any talk of what they've won, it's always the next one. That's the secret of their success - their humility, their respect for one another, their respect for the game, they're playing together for so long. Nothing would surprise me with this bunch."

Ephie Fitzgerald has continued where Eamonn Ryan left off by guiding the Rebelettes to All-Ireland glory.

"It's actually an awful lot harder being on the line than playing. Last night the nerves, this morning nerves and the lunch came out and I didn't even want to eat it, just nervous for the girls. Then you look at it then and a lot of them have 10 All-Irelands and you trust that they're going to do it. We talk about humility and it's true, there's no ego in this Cork team and what strikes me is that they do everything at 100pc."

Fitzgerald's right-hand man, former Cork star James Masters, struggled with his nerves in the build-up to the final!

"We have six championship medals but for a long time we didn't think we'd get any. We won the league in 2003 but it was a long way to 2009 and a lot of hard work and a lot of defeats and a lot of hard times, but thankfully we have six and the five in-a-row is very special too. It's the first time that any team in the club has done it."

Conor Laverty and Kilcoo made it five Down SFC wins in-a-row at Newry yesterday.

"You can see from our performances in the last couple of years players will fight for each other on the day. It's the same in training, same in a meeting, lads are going to be united always. That's what we have in Clare; a great bunch. That unity was instilled by the manager as well. It's fitting that that continues into next year."

Clare joint-captain Cian Dillon insisted the players were united following Davy Fitzgerald's departure as manager.

"I don't think it's an issue. We regularly measure the moisture, hardness and traction of the pitch using specific devices to do so, so we can have comparisons game-on-game, month-on-month, year-on-year. We make sure that these readings are within set tolerances. We aren't standing outside, sticking our finger in the air and saying 'it'll be grand'; this is methodically looked at. We often hear people saying that the grass was too long or two short for a certain game, but the grass has been the exact same length on match-day for the past three years."

Stadium director Peter McKenna defended the state of the Croke Park pitch in the wake of criticism following the drawn All-Ireland SFC final.

Tweet

Most Read Stories