'Biggest job I'll ever get': Why Cathal Murray stuck with Galway

Murray said the doesn't see the Galway job as a "stepping stone" to working with a men's team

Cathal Murray has been Galway camogie manager since midway through the 2018 season. Pic:  ©INPHO/Tom Maher

Peering in from the outside, there was an inkling that Cathal Murray might pull the curtain on his Galway premiership at the end of last year.

Appointed midway through the 2018 campaign after players ousted the previous management, Murray had eight championship campaigns put down. He had masterminded - in sensational fashion last August - Galway’s summit reclaim at the expense of three-in-a-row chasing Cork. It was a third All-Ireland on his watch that elevated him above Tony Ward as the county’s most successful ever camogie boss.

Beyond the frequency at which the Sarsfields clubman delivered senior ribbons - his three All-Irelands in seven years compare so favourably to the two titles across the previous 87 - Murray had spent so many of those eight campaigns double-jobbing as the county’s Intermediate or U23 manager. He’d won All-Irelands in both. He had nothing left to prove.

So, why come back again in 2026?

“It's a top job. I'm not going to work with a group like this again, and I still think there's potentially unfinished business there,” Murray replied.

“What I saw last year was the amount of players that were coming through, developing, and potentially able to play senior. That's what you want to go after. You want to be involved in developing that team.

“I also feel it's the biggest job I'll ever get. When I go from it, I’ll probably go from it. I just felt I'd something more to give, and I felt there was a team there to be able to compete. In fairness, we have. We've lost players and we're still competing.

“It's very hard to walk away. I love what I do.” 

That comment that he won’t ever be in ownership of a bigger job is striking. Donal O’Rourke, David Herity, Brian Dowling, and Liam Cronin all passed through the camogie sphere on their way to managing or coaching a men’s senior inter-county team. Not Murray.

“It isn't a stepping stone anymore for me, the standard is huge,” he added.

The aforementioned O’Rourke, who worked under Murray for the 2021 success over Cork, two-time All-Ireland winning captain Sarah Dervan, and player-marking specialist Caitriona Cormican have all mentioned in previous interviews the culture of professionalism that Murray instilled to transform the county and deliver the 2019 and ‘21 wins.

Beaten semi-finalists in ‘22 and ‘23, what additional layers were embedded to deliver this second wave of maroon prominence? Sunday, after all, is only the third time in the county’s history that they’ve reached three consecutive deciders.

“I just think there's a lot of really good players developing at the one time and probably a few teams that are coming together,” he continued.

“There's a good few that have come up from the intermediate team in ‘19. We had a really good intermediate team in ‘21 that was beaten by a couple of points in the semi-final against Antrim, who won the final handy. 

"Áine Keane, Racheal Hanniffy, players like that, have come off that team. Then there's a huge nucleus of young players come through from the 2022 winning intermediate team. There's a lot of players from the last two U23 teams coming onto the panel now, and that's what we want.

“Last year is gone, last year is done. It's a new group.”