Where does a 11x All Australian, 4x Premiership player rank among the best-ever players in the country?

What about one who’s also played two other football codes at an elite level. All this, before she arrived in Australia and added another round-ball code to her repertoire.

Over the past five years, the AFL Women’s competition has been blessed to watch one of Ireland’s top 16 most important athletes of the last 100 years go to work.

As Cora Staunton gets set to add another milestone to her bursting list of sporting achievements - reaching 50 games (consecutively) in the AFLW - it’s worth taking a look back at her remarkable sporting career.

To say Staunton is a Gaelic sporting legend is an understatement.

“They’re (Australians) never probably going to know the enormity of it,” said current teammate and former foe Bríd Stack, herself a 11x All Ireland winner and 7x All Star.

“We’ve already lived a career at home and people at home have seen Cora over 25 years.

“In AFLW she’s relatively new but she’s had a full career at home before the AFLW and for her to be able to graft out a career here at maybe a more experienced age is something she’s hugely respected for.”

Staunton won four All Ireland titles with Mayo. Another six with her club side, Carnacon. And 11 All Star Awards in a career that has spanned more than 25 years and began in the senior women's team when she was just 13 years old.

She also successfully turned her hand to soccer (wining a domestic cup in the process) and rugby union - including scoring seven tries on debut for Castlebar Ladies, whom she captained to a league title.

Stack has seen Staunton’s career develop first-hand.

“Cora’s from county Mayo and I’m from county Cork,” she said.

"She was on the football team a couple of years before me. They were a highly successful team … they were the queen pins in Gaelic football at home.

“We were a young side … I was 17 or 18 when we won our first All-Ireland and we actually overcame Cora’s team in the semi-final.

“We’d been beaten by them numerous times over the previous years so we were very well-aware of Cora and the damage she could do and more often than not she probably did it single-handedly.

“From 2005 onwards, myself and Cora were very close on the field as direct markers.

“I wouldn’t have said it was always the rosiest of relationships at the start, but I suppose when you play against someone for long enough and you meet them at functions and trips outside of football then you develop friendships and I’d always had huge respect for her.

“She’s been involved in sport for a very very long time because she’s very very old,” Stack laughed.

Staunton’s age - she turns 41 in December - has always been a talking point.

She was 35 when the approach about turning her hand to AFLW came. And it almost didn’t eventuate, multiple times.

Former coach Alan McConnell was the one who turned to Ireland to solve a list management problem, with Staunton becoming the first Irishwoman to join the AFLW.

“We’re presented with an interesting conundrum around access to high-end talent with a state-based draft … so we resolved that we can’t just do what everybody else does. We made a decision that we need to do things differently,” he said.

Former GIANTS assistant coach Nick Walsh - himself an Irishman - knew of Cora, of course. But he connected with her for the first time in China while she was on an All-Stars international tour.

He came back to Australia and suggested to McConnell that he should look into her.

So, McConnell did what anyone does - he googled Staunton.

“She wins,” he said of what he first noticed.

“And she keeps winning. She has a history of defying the odds. If you know where her team comes from - both her club and her county - they have a long history of success and that’s what interested me most.

“That was the Google search and then the next piece was to send my son from London to Ireland to watch her play.”

It was a clandestine operation - she was in-season for both her club side Carnacon and her county Mayo and both were doing well. Plus, no-one back home knew what McConnell was exploring.

Son Ben watched her play in Ireland, taking footage from behind the goals to send back to his Dad. Then they caught up the next morning for a kick.

“They have a kick the next day where he’s got a GoPro on - it was the worst footage, it was a complete waste of time,” McConnell laughed.

They decided it would be worthwhile Staunton coming out to Australia. But Mayo had made it to the All-Ireland final - where they would eventually lose to Dublin - and the trip getting pushed back.

Meanwhile, the 2017 NAB AFLW Draft date was getting closer.

On October 17 - the day before the Draft - Staunton (after a Visa issue delayed her) arrived in Sydney and headed straight to GIANTS HQ for a trial.

“We’ve literally got 24 hours to make decisions,” McConnell said.

She had a kick outside with the strange-shaped ball before heading into the club’s indoor kicking area for some ball work.

McConnell could see she was driven, but after a long-haul flight and with advice and recommendations coming from unfamiliar people all around, he was suddenly unsure how an Irishwoman could make the transition to the AFLW.

“The longer that session went on, the more anxious I became to be honest,” he said.

“Leon Cameron came out to join the last five minutes of the session. He watched for a bit and encouraged Cora for a bit.

“He walked over and whispered in my ear, ‘what are you thinking?’. I basically said, 'I’m getting cold feet’.

“He said, 'trust your instincts and get on with it'. So, I walked to the other end of the room, shook hands and said, ‘here’s the deal - you come, and we’ll give it a crack. We’re both in this for it to succeed. There’s no promises, are you in?’” 

A day later Staunton was selected at pick 47 in the Draft, shocking the competition who had no idea the GIANTS were even looking abroad.

Then, it was back to Ireland. Club side Carnacon kept winning and, on December 3, Staunton captained her side to a sixth All-Ireland senior ladies club football title at Parnell Park.

She arrived back in Australia to begin her AFLW career two weeks before Christmas. The 2018 season started six weeks later. She lined up in round one and hasn’t missed a game since.

In that time, she’s kicked 54 goals - third on the all-time AFLW goal kickers list, trailing only Tayla Harris (57) and Darcy Vescio (55) who both began their careers the previous season.

She’s won the GIANTS’ leading goal kicker award three times, and could well add another trophy this season, as well as the coaches award in 2020 and the Jacinda Barclay Fearless Award in 2022.

Her achievement of 50 games in a row is made even more remarkable by the horrific broken leg she suffered while playing club football in Sydney ahead of the 2020 season.

"I’ll never forget I’m sitting in the coach's box in Canberra and Alicia (Eva) tapped on the window and told me what had gone on during a break in the game. I spent the afternoon ringing surgeons,” McConnell said.

Staunton broke her leg in May and was back for the start of the next season in February.

“Ridiculous,” McConnell said of her comeback.

"The initial prognosis was that it was probably career-ending.

“She literally had to learn to walk and then to jog and then to run again. It wasn’t just the bones that were broken but there was soft tissue and nerve damage as well.”

McConnell maintains that it was Staunton’s history of success that led him to recruit her all those years ago; and while her on-field exploits have more than lived up to her reputation, it’s been the off-field traits that her teammates have learnt from her that will leave a lasting impact.

“The reason I asked her to come is best exemplified by that rehab,” he said.

From foes to friends, Stack is grateful their paths have crossed again on the other side of the world.

“It wasn’t until I came to Australia that I really got to know Cora as a person,” she said.

“Especially given the way that my AFLW career started, I probably had to rely on her a lot more. She invested herself completely in my family and I’ll be forever indebted to her.

“I’d always had huge respect for Cora, I certainly have got to know her as a friend over here in Australia and I’m delighted to finally get to call her a teammate after being on an opposition team for so long.

“I just wish her the very best, she’s a competitor to the end.”

When you’ve played elite sport since you were 13 - 28 years - it’s natural some of your sporting traits become who you are as a person.

“Pig-headed,” McConnell laughed when asked to describe her.

"Driven. Unbelievably competitive. Very team orientated. Humble. And a really good person.”

We may never again see someone with the sporting achievements of Staunton grace our shores to play in our competition.

Staunton was the first Irishwoman but won’t be the last. There are currently 22 players in the AFLW competition that can thank Staunton and McConnell for thinking outside the box.

She’ll be 41 when she heads home to Ireland later this year to decide if she’ll come back for a seventh season in 2023.

Given her history of success, you’d be wise not to write her off.