"It’s dominated about 80% of my life" - Mayo's Cora speaks about her remarkable career
Former Mayo ladies football star Cora Staunton has spoken about her remarkable career from 1995 to 2018.
An article in the Irish Independent marking 50 years of the sport said she transcended women’s Gaelic football from the turn of the 21st century and, similar to Irish sportswomen like Sonia and Katie, Cora’s first name is recognition enough.
She played inter-county football for 24 seasons and won four All-Ireland senior medals, as well as a record-equalling 11 All Stars, and helped her club, Carnacon, to six All-Ireland senior club titles.
It wasn’t just the success but Cora’s innate and prodigious talent that made her a household name, journalist Sinéad Kissane wrote.
“I probably didn’t recognise at the time what I was doing for the game, if I’m being honest,” Staunton said. “I was very driven.”
Cora was 13 when she joined the Mayo senior panel and she reeled off two goals and five points on her debut in 1995.
Her standing in the squad was such that, when she broke her collarbone a week before her first All-Ireland final in 1999, she still walked with the team in the parade in Croke Park and she played for the first 47 seconds before going off.
“I think because I’d been through a very difficult year, my mother had died, I think it was a token of maybe appreciation that he [manager Finbar Egan] decided to do that. You tell that story now and people nearly don’t believe it. It’s madness!”
Mayo won the Brendan Martin Cup that year and also in 2000, 2002 and 2003. Cora’s rise came at a time when TG4 started broadcasting the All-Ireland final live from 2001 while the increasing popularity of social media was a way for her latest exploits to spread, like when she scored nine goals and 12 points in a club game in 2015.
When it came to the fame game, Cora says she was a reluctant player. However she was also part of sponsorship promotions that broke the mould for a female player in our national sport.
“You’re starting to get sponsorship deals with Puma and I was on a Lucozade Sport ad for years with Ronan O’Gara and Damien Duff. This is all happening at age 18/19 and I hadn’t really a clue what I was doing to be honest,” Staunton recalled
“I started college and scholarships were being offered, even though we never applied for them. In college, in particular, I became very recognisable. I didn’t like it. I just got on with it.
“I just loved the sport so much. It probably took me a long time to even realise I was a role model; it was certainly well into my late 20s. There were events that I was at and I didn’t even know why I was invited. I just used to roll with it.
“We used to love getting to the All-Ireland final because we got to keep our jersey after. The only jersey you’d get all year. And then you just see the opposite with the men that they’re being flooded with gear.”
Cora’s talent traversed the hemispheres in 2017 when she became the first international player to sign with an AFLW team in Australia at age 41.
She retired from the Giants last year but she still plays a bit of football at home with Carnacon. She couldn’t imagine a world without it.
“It’s been my life really since I was about seven. It’s dominated about 75/80% of my life. I played for Mayo for 24 years for the senior [team]. So I wouldn’t know anything less.”