Aoife Murray: Emotions ran high in All-Ireland win

Her Cork future is something she will decide another day but captain Aoife Murray was happy if emotional to reveal a key motivating factor for her on Sunday.

Sporting tape around her wrist with the initials S.A along with those of her mother and father, she divulged it was in honour of her late friend Sally Anne Shannon who passed away following a car accident near Macroom almost 19 years ago.

Shannon was a Cloughduv club-mate of Murray and her memory has accompanied Murray in every game.

“I always put her on my wristband. It just keeps her going. Sorry, I’m getting emotional talking about her. But it just reminds me, sometimes in the heat of battle you can lose the head and I look down to it, she always made me laugh for the 17 years that she was alive. She always made me laugh because she did something stupid or said the wrong thing at the extremely right time.

It just reminds me to look down at her and kind of bring a bit of reality to the situation, and I always smile when I see it. Unfortunately, she passed at a very young age but we all made a promise that we’d keep her going. She would certainly have been in the thick of things today, she would have been keeping the celebrations going.

Emotions were bound to run high on Sunday as Murray was first to walk up the famous Hogan Stand steps. That there were a few glitches in her acceptance speech was perfectly understandable.

“I don’t know what hit me going up the steps but I started bawling crying. I was like ‘Jeez, pull this together, you’ve dreamt of this all your life, don’t mess it up.’ Then a couple of my cards got stuck together and one of those was congratulating the intermediates.

"It is better to just keep talking because there were a few moments when I just took a breath and I was looking around going ‘Jeez, is this reality or is this Friday night and I’m dreaming of it?’ So yeah it’s a moment that probably comes and goes too quickly but I’m sure there are enough photographs there to remind me of it.”

Given Murray worried last year’s success might be her last final she had every reason to let the significance of the one-point win over Kilkenny wash over her. “I’ve been carrying an injury with my knee for the last two years and I knew that when I went to Santry that it was going to be a big question of whether I can do it again or not.

When the captaincy came about, look it’s something I always dreamed about as a kid and I think anybody who says they didn’t are completely lying to you. So when that opportunity came about I said I’d always have a ‘what if’ if I don’t go and do it. Okay, the first four or five months were extremely difficult, the knee just never seemed to settle down.

“I suppose I was very lucky with the likes of Eanna Falvey and Ray Moran and all those guys in Santry that they persevered and stopped me from blowing up on the field on different occasions. Yeah, it’s been a mad 12 months, it’s amazing what can happen in 12 months and isn’t that the beauty of sport.

I left Croke Park last year probably saying I might never get the chance to do that again. As we said in the dressing-room we are extremely fortunate people to get the opportunity to live this life.

Murray took the chance in her address to aim back at those who had criticised her brother and manager Paudie earlier in the year. Murray had a public row with UCC boss Shane Ronayne about player availability while he has also suffered some stick for the style Cork were playing.

“I think management are always criticised. If you’ve tactics these days, people always give out.

"I know with Paudie at the start of the year there was a few little dual clashes and there were people on Twitter having a go off of Paudie and I think he answered all those.

“He places a lot of demands on us but only because he knows we can do it. If he didn’t maybe we wouldn’t have had the bit of steel to get us over the line. We all had to be soldiers out there, we’d all love to be artists but sometimes soldiers get you over the line.

“I don’t know too many defensive teams that can put up 4-27. Or 3-22 or whatever we scored. I don’t think defensive teams have 15 scorers on one particular day. So how could we be defensive if we’ve been completely offensive? We’ve been conceding more because we’ve been extremely attacking. We weren’t going to be allowed to do that today.

“We’d love to have a shut out, wouldn’t that be just brilliant. But you have to play what’s in front of you.”