Amy O’Connor: ‘I know a lot of people that have gone down the wrong road’

A national newspaper article earlier in the year noted how short a distance it is from Knocknaheeny to the gates of University College Cork.

The crucial rider, of course, given the area’s high levels of unemployment and social problems is that it’s a journey very few ever make.

Amy O’Connor was the first of her family in Knocknaheeny to go to college, attending UCC as a scholarship recipient, and just last week graduated with a Masters in Pharmacy from the Royal College of Surgeons.

“I literally only got my results on Thursday,” smiled O’Connor.

A former Irish underage soccer international and now a mainstay of the Cork camogie set-up, she is a high achiever with an inner hope that others from her area will follow. It’s a drum she has banged publicly before and she is unapologetic for doing so again.

“I am not going to say I am the first in the area to go to college but it’s not really the thing to do in my area, unfortunately,” she said.

“I didn’t go to my local school — now the school that I went to was only two minutes away.

“But the school that would have been my closest school, it’s not really a thing to go on to UCC or CIT or anywhere like that.

It’s just not the norm and it’s very hard to change that when it’s just cycles of people doing the same as what their parents did. It is disappointing but you just have to try to make it better.

Naturally, O’Connor witnessed peers diverging from the tracks of sport and education and going down different routes.

“I know an awful lot of people that have gone down the wrong road,” she said. “It’s very easy to go down the wrong road, unfortunately.”

O’Connor insists she is not putting down the area, far from it.

She is aware of how words can be twisted after making comments about the health of camogie earlier in the year and feeling they were taken out of context in the media.

And this is too important a subject to reduce to a war over words.

“I don’t want to put the area down either because there is huge work being done in the area to try to get people on the straight and narrow, to try to get people to go on and do other things,” she said.

“And I’m not saying that everyone has to go to college, because college is not the be all and end all either, it’s not for everyone.

“There are very successful people who have never gone to college but it’s just about kind of breaking cycles that have gone before people and that is very difficult to do.”

O’Connor doesn’t wish to be considered an iconoclast either, though aside from her achievements in education she is one of just two players on the Cork squad from junior clubs.

Her recent All-Star at left half-forward on the team of 2019 was a breakthrough moment for St Vincents.

“It was a great night, I had a table with the family, then the next night at the club itself was very special,” she said.

“I was the first All-Star from the club, male or female, and they had a homecoming for me, the whole club turned out.

Obviously when you start off playing, you hear about the All-Stars and it’s something you want to win. I don’t think at the start of any year you set out to actually win one, you set out to win the All-Ireland.

“Unfortunately it didn’t happen in that regard for us but it was nice to get an All-Star, to be recognised like that.”

For all the garlands thrown O’Connor’s way lately, Cork’s one-point All-Ireland semi-final defeat to Galway in August still rankles.

“We were awful on the day,” she said flatly.

“You can’t pinpoint one thing and say that’s why we lost. Galway were just better on the day and unfortunately we didn’t turn up.

"And in Cork if you don’t win outright that’s not good enough. Winning Munster was brilliant but the All-Ireland is where you want to be.

“This is my sixth year with Cork and my first year not being involved (in a final). So August and September was strange.”

Littlewoods Ireland has announced it will renew its sponsorship of the All-Ireland senior hurling championship, the Littlewoods Ireland camogie leagues and the GAA Go Games provincial days until 2022.