Joe Brolly paid Cora Staunton one of the strangest compliments you'll hear after the former Mayo Legend shone for her club Carnacon last weekend.
Staunton now 42 made her inter-county debut for Mayo 29 years ago in 1995 - she was just 13 at the time. Four years later the Carnacon woman appeared in her first All-Ireland final - the rest is history.
Since that fateful day in 1995, Cora Staunton has won an astonishing four All-Irelands with Mayo, eleven All-Stars, and six club All-Irelands with Carnacon. That is before one considers her FAI Women's Cup title, her Connacht Rugby Women's League title or her 50 AFL appearances for the GWS Giants in Sydney.
Now however, having hung up her boots Down Under, Staunton is back in her homeland of Carnacon, driving the standards as a new generation of footballers take over from Staunton's old guard that became the most successful club side in the history of Ladies Football.
While Staunton's return may have closed the gap between her native Carnacon and County Champions Knockmore, even her trojan effort last weekend that put the County Champions to the sword wasn't enough to eliminate them.
24 September 2017; Cora Staunton of Mayo during the TG4 Ladies Football All-Ireland Senior Championship Final match between Dublin and Mayo at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
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Joe Brolly pays Cora Staunton peculiar compliment
Despite the loss, Joe Brolly hailed the impact Cora Staunton had on the game, claiming she changed what had been a foregone conclusion into a competitive affair.
While her performance earned her the plaudits of Joe Brolly in the Irish Independent, the Derry Native's compliments were certainly of a peculiar nature - pondering what could've been if Staunton had 'been born a man'.
We agreed that if she had been born a man, Mayo would not have lost all those All-Ireland finals. She would have been the missing ingredient. The driving force. The winner they were so badly lacking. Those last five minutes where the boys wilted in multiple All-Irelands must have been a mystery to Cora.
Like Cody, or Henry Downey, or Cluxton, she is driven, obsessed. Like all of the winners, she takes it personally... To Cora, the old GAA adage “Win, lose or draw, we are all in this together” must seem ridiculous. She famously hates losing.
She must have recoiled at all those cheery homecomings for the men after they had lost finals.
While Brolly's comments are a far cry from what one hears pundits or journalists talking about today, weirdly it's easy to understand what Brolly is trying to say.
Staunton's achievements are too great and wide-ranging to merely attribute to talent or gift, they're more than that, they have to be born of personality, determination and character.
While Brolly's manner of explaining it may be unconventional - one thing is certain, it deserves to be said.
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