IRISH TIMES/IRISH SPORTS COUNCIL Sportswomen Award for September

After opting to make joint awards in March and July the judging panel for the Irish Times/Irish Sports Council Sportswoman of the Year vowed to be ruthless, decisive and single-minded from there on in. Then September came along....the best laid plans of mice and men and all that.

Before 2009, joint awards were rare enough, but this year is fast turning in to a vintage one for Irish sportswomen, with more genuine contenders for the overall honour than we've ever had before - and that's with three months of awards still to go.

September was another case in point.When Madeline Perry produced the finest performances of her professional squash career in reaching the final of the British Open, her sport's most prestigious event, we had our winner. But then Cork did yet another camogie and football double, the footballers completing a five-in-a-row. In the end, the real difficulty was restricting the September award to just two winners.

Mary O'Connor, one of three dual players to win both All-Irelands this year (Rena Buckley and our 2005 Sportswoman of the Year Briege Corkery were the others), was our choice from the victorious Cork teams, not just as a representative of both but also because of her own extraordinary achievements.

O'Connor has now won 12 senior All-Ireland titles, although injury prevented her from lining out in the 2007 football final. Add in a string of National League and club titles, All-Star awards and the 2006 camogie Player of the Year award and you have one of the most successful Gaelic players of this or any other generation.

The Camogie Association Development Officer from Killeagh played in defence for the camogie team in their 0-15 to 0-7 defeat of Kilkenny in last month's final, captaining the footballers to victory a fortnight later from her place in the Cork attack. And she still had enough breath left to deliver a rousing victory speech.

O'Connor, then, is our joint September winner with Perry, who has now won a monthly award every year since we started out in 2004. Never before, though, did the 32-year-old from Banbridge enjoy a week like she had in Manchester last month, when, seeded five, she reached the British Open final after playing "the best squash of my life".

While her semi-final victory over number three seed Alison Watters of England was memorable, it was her quarter-final defeat of world number one Nicol David that was simply breathtaking.

The Malaysian, who had beaten Perry in their previous 14 meetings, has topped the world rankings for 41 consecutive months and it was two years since she had failed to reach the final of a tournament. The defending champion appeared to be well on track for the semi-finals when she went two games up against Perry, earning three match balls along the way. But
Perry, who, by her own admission, usually struggles "to get a game off Nicol", fought back in quite spectacular style, taking the next three games 15-13, 11-5, 11-9, beating David after a marathon 76-minute contest.

Her defeat in straight games to Australian Rachael Grinham (the world number four) in the final was a disappointing end to the tournament for Perry, but she consoled himself with the knowledge that reaching the final, and beating David along the way, meant she had "reached another level."

Earlier this month Perry rose to number seven in the world rankings, one short of her highest ever position, achieved in April of 2006. That, of course, was before she suffered a career-threatening head injury when she was mugged in Italy, her comeback from that incident proof, if it were needed, of her resilience.