'My dream would be to play for Galway again'

Corofin has been home to the Andy Merrigan Cup on five occasions and despite coming from a family that isn't steeped in usual sporting tradition, Dearbhla Gower grew up rubbing shoulders with some of the team that dominated the All-Ireland men’s club scene in recent years.

Gower, who has stepped away from the Galway set-up this year due to work commitments, was next door neighbours to Corofin stars Liam, Cathal, Darragh and Seán Silke.

"When I was really young, I was about eight or nine, I was playing with the lads, all my neighbours, I’m actually neighbours with Liam Silke and a lot of the Corofin men’s team," said Gower.

"I was playing with the lads until I was about eight years old. But then I got annoyed as, apparently, I wasn’t allowed to play matches with them. So my poor Dad, to stop me from losing interest in it, sourced out an U-12 girls team for Corofin ladies. He just asked is there any chance I could train with them.

"The manager was lovely, she said she would try give me a little bit of game time, five minutes at the end."

However, the Corofin U-12s only had 13 players that day so eight-year old Gower had to fill-in for the full slog. It was another rough introduction for the future All-Star nominee goalkeeper.

Eventually, she joined a more adequate age-group and her father, David, was asked to help out in training.

"The manager was struggling to get people to help, so he asked my dad because he was at every training session, dropping me and another girl to training," said Gower.

"My dad joked, you know I’m English I don’t know the rules of the game. And your man, Bernie Glynn, was like: 'as long as you can pick up cones, that’s all you need to be able to do."

David Gower went from picking up cones to Corofin LGFA