Casserly and Galway hoping to extend unbeaten run for one more game in All-Ireland intermediate decider

Galway may have secured their position in Sunday's Glen Dimplex All-Ireland intermediate camogie final (2pm, live on RTÉ2) by winning every single game, unlike opponents Cork, but one gets the sense that it has come as just a little bit of a surprise.

With a massive squad overhaul this year, they would have been buoyed by only losing to a senior team, Antrim, in the Littlewoods Ireland Division 2 League.

With Cork, Derry, Meath, Kilkenny and Wexford in Group 2, they were undoubtedly given an easier draw in the championship and capitalised, scoring 11-97 and conceding just 41 points in five games.

They showed a lot of character to edge out a hardened Meath unit by four points in the semi-final at UPMC Nowlan Park last Saturday week and here they are, captain Lisa Casserly an hour away from leading her young side to the Jack McGrath Cup.

"When everyone starts out pre-season, the end goal is always to get to Croke Park but I suppose for us, we’ve had a lot of turnover of players from last year, so our main goal was to just get the minors in, try and get a structure in place and we really just took it one game at the time then from that," explains Casserly.

Olwen Rabbitte, Clara Hickey, Ally Hesnan and Niamh McInerney were all members of Galway team that lost to Cork in the All-Ireland minor final in March.

They have added real energy and belief to the squad and it said a lot that having cruised through the group, they recovered from a first-half wobble, precipitated by the concession of Aoife Minogue’s fabulous second minute goal, to fashion that 3-09 to 2-08 triumph courtesy of second half goals from Laura Kelly and Rabbitte.

"We knew going down there it was going to be a massive challenge. You could see the scoreline differences