Libby and Orla lead UCC to final of Ashbourne Cup

WHEN you have a scheduled as packed as Libby Coppinger’s, postponements are unwelcome developments.

Last weekend, the St Colum’s star was to set to play in the final of the Ashbourne Cup, the intervarsity camogie competition, for UCC against UL, but Mother Nature – clearly never a camogie player herself – made a decisive contribution.

At the time of writing, the two teams were waiting to find out when the game would take place, leaving Coppinger and her team-mates in limbo, though appreciative of the rest.

‘When you’re up for a game like that, it’s hard when you’re told it’s off,’ she says.

‘We were kind of surprised as it had been bad for the semi-final the previous Tuesday, but the extra rest won’t have done us any harm, that’s never a bad thing.

‘We haven’t heard a finalised date yet for it to go ahead, there’s talk of it being next Tuesday or Wednesday. We do play a lot of college camogie during the week anyway, though it will be kind of weird to have the final midweek.

‘With the national leagues though, there won’t be any other free weekend, so a weekday is the only way to go.’

For UCC and public health student Coppinger, it’s a third straight final against UL, with the previous two having been lost. This year, she is joint-captain along with Enniskeane’s Orla Cronin.

‘I was very surprised to be asked,’ she say, ‘it’s a great honour.

‘It was the management’s choice to have joint captains, I didn’t ask why as I was just trying to take it all in!

‘I suppose it’s nice to have two different voices and it puts less pressure on us rather than there just being one captain, the duties can be shared.’

The pair roomed together the night before last weekend’s non-game, but Coppinger says that there has been no discussion of who would make the speech if they do win, saying that they’d ‘deal with that if and when it happens’.

Already this year, she has captained the Cork senior camogie team as well, filling in for the injured Aoife Murray for the Galway game at the start of the league.

She will once again be involved with the Cork footballers too and, having been the reluctant subject of a fixtures-clash last year, she is optimistic that such incidents are a thing of the past.

‘That’s the hope,’ she says, ‘from what we’ve been told it’s less likely that it’s going to happen again.

‘The finals of the O’Connor Cup [intervarsity football – UCC played DCU in the Mardyke last night] may clash with a camogie league game but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

‘Both management teams have been co-operating well and working out a schedule that will suit us all,’ Coppinger added.