Aoife Donohue found herself at the centre of a significant shift in fortunes in the All-Ireland camogie final on August 10th. Galway were settling into the challenge of preventing Cork from achieving a third successive All-Ireland. Donohue had opened the scoring, laying down a marker for what would be a sensational display.
Yet in the 10th minute, she found herself covering when Amy O’Connor was heading for goal and the Galway wing forward stopped her. Penalty.
“I could kind of see it happening,” she recalls, “the ball going over the top and I was probably hoping she mightn’t catch it. Obviously I gave it away and at the time I was thinking ‘oh God, Aoife, what are you after doing?’
“Sarah Healy’s an unbelievable goalie as well – I would back her to save those, and once she saved it, it was probably a bit of relief. I don’t know. In the moment, you don’t really think about it, either. It just happened so quickly.
READ MORE
“If it went in, I’d probably be regretting it, to be honest. I probably shouldn’t have even been back there!”
Just over a minute later, she was raiding at the other end and sweeping over a point to equalise. Then, a deft pickup in traffic and she set off on another run before supplying the assist for Mairéad Dillon’s goal to put Galway in front.
Her display earned consensus Player of the Match recognition and the final PwC GAA/GPA Player of the Month award on Monday, after which she spoke remotely to media.
The Mullagh player’s flair for the big occasion had previously been in evidence. Twelve months ago, despite losing narrowly to Cork in last year’s All-Ireland final, she picked up the same award.
One platform of Galway’s unexpected success was the physical commitment they brought to the contest. Camogie had suffered in the past from fussy enforcement of contact. The more robust nature of the final was one of the elements that made it such a compelling spectacle.
“I suppose when you’re in the middle of it, you don’t really think about it too much,” she said.
“Looking back at it now, the tackles, the physicality jumped through the roof. I thought last year’s All-Ireland final had gone up another level, but I think last Sunday it went up another one again.
“It’s great for camogie and, in fairness to the referee as well, he allowed for that and it contributed to the game that it was.”
It’s an evolution she welcomes.
“We’ve obviously been calling on it for quite a while now. As players, all of us are a lot stronger, fitter, faster – we’re able for it. It’s definitely something we’ve been looking for.”
Galway’s progress had been noted. Like Tipperary’s hurlers, they had lost the league final to Cork by double digits and yet rebounded through a steadily improving championship to deny the favourites in the All-Ireland final. Donohue questions the relevance of that earlier outcome.
“I suppose, on the day (of the league final), Cork blew us off the pitch, to be totally honest. Obviously, we were probably looking at ourselves, wondering where we were going to go but, no, I wouldn’t say we ever stopped believing – sure there was a full championship to go. So, yeah, it wasn’t really relevant but, obviously, you take learnings from it.
“Our championship went fairly well. We were kind of building game on game. Last year, we were – not struggling, but winning games by a point or two, whereas, I felt this year we were performing a little bit better. As the year went on we got stronger as a group.
“Our goal was, obviously, to get straight to a semi-final. We topped our group, had a four-week block there of hard training ... and I thought we performed fairly well in the semi-final against Tipperary.”
And the future?
“We love it; we love playing camogie. You wouldn’t be coming back if you didn’t love doing what you were doing. It’s never hard. Like, I’ll stay playing as long as I can. It’s because we love it so much, it’s never hard to come back when you’re enjoying it.”
