Murray in no hurry to stop as she loves her sport

You’re familiar with this place?

“A small bit, yeah,” she laughs as she looks out over the Croke Park pitch from high in the Hogan Stand.

“But I don’t think you can ever get too familiar. I live in Dublin, and I drive past here a lot, and you’re always stretching the neck, having a look. It’s a magical place.”

And after seven finals in nine years, between 2004 and 2012, Cork camogie goalkeeper Aoife Murray has experienced a bit of everything out on that pitch,

“I’ve had great days, I’ve had terrible days, so I’ve seen both sides of the coin.”

She admits that memories of three lost finals stick in the mind a little more stubbornly than the four she won, not least the 2012 defeat by Wexford.

“Even in January I wasn’t in a good place to come back, there were still memories of the goals I let in, missed puck-outs, all that. I’ve had to learn as I’ve gone along how to deal with them, to let them go, not to be haunted by them.

“There was a time I’d hold on to them three months into the winter. But I think age and experience helps you deal with it. You can appreciate the good days more, because you know just how bad the bad ones are.”

The three-time All-Star came by her love for the sport honestly. “In the blood,” says the Cloughduv native, the youngest of 11.

Pucking about

“I was always dragged out to make up the numbers. We lived on a farm so we had plenty of walls to hit the ball against, plenty of targets to aim for, plenty of fields to go running around and to be pucking about.

“And I was very lucky as a kid, I had my own role models in my brothers and sisters – Clare and Emer played underage Cork football, Kevin was minor at that stage (he went on to win a senior hurling All-Ireland with Cork in 1999), Paudie was under-21, so we were surrounded by it.

"I played football for a while with Dohenys in Dunmanway, but had to retire at the serious age of 13. At that stage I was really loving the camogie. My first sport in school would have been volleyball, but my height started to go against me as I got older – I was able to walk under the net," she laughs. "And I played squash. Anything and everything."

She was, though, a stranger to rugby back then, and even as the women’s game began to take off she was sceptical enough. “I had this opinion that women shouldn’t play rugby. Based on nothing. I just didn’t see it – and me running around with a piece of wood in my hand. Pot, kettle, black, like.”

But two years ago, after the camogie season ended, she gave herself a month off sport.

"Then I got bored and decided I needed to go and do something in the winter, get to know people in Dublin. One of my friends, Fionnuala Carr who plays camogie for Down, suggested rugby. I said 'not a hope.'

“But before I knew it I was going down to Old Belvedere on my own on a Thursday night. I wasn’t bowled over by it, but they were so welcoming I decided I had to give it a go – and I absolutely fell in love with it.”

So, from keeping goal in camogie, Murray was set free.

Allowed run

“And that’s why I really loved it, all of a sudden I was allowed run!

“They had me at inside and outside centre, I was allowed break lines, I could use my imagination, whereas in goals you have such a defined role. The freedom of playing outfield? Loved it!”

And in no time she was turning out for Old Belvedere in the All-Ireland Cup. Come summer she was, she said, “glued” to the World Cup.

“D’you know what, it was quite emotional watching it, simply because so many of our Belvo colleagues were playing, and we were so proud of them, to see them achieving like that.

“And some of these women played GAA and took up rugby later in life, and here they were.

“What I was most proud of was that they were giving younger boys and girls such amazing role models. Forget that they’re women, just look at their achievement.”

Both her rugby and camogie ground to a halt last November when a back problem looked set to rule her out for the foreseeable future.

A combination of wear and tear and a knock in the first half of the camogie semi-final last year – “I knew when I fell that it was a different pain” – took its toll. An MRI scan confirming the damage. But after a 16-week rehabilitation programme at the Sports Surgery Clinic in Santry she returned to action following a seven-month break.

“And at Christmas I didn’t think there was a hope I’d get back this year. It was a tough time, but I had great support, not least from Jones Lang LaSalle,” she said of the company she joined as a valuation surveyor when she moved from Cork to Dublin.

Hobbling in

“They were so accommodating when I was hobbling in with the back injury – and now I’m coming in battered or bruised from the camogie – not exactly what you want going to meetings with clients,” she laughs.

Her manager with Cork was also understanding but he’d want to be – Paudie is her brother.

Tricky? “Well, he’s been telling me what to do since I was a baby, so I had a lifetime of training under him. He trained me at a very young age at Cloughduv, as did Kevin, so I was used to seeing them in that role. I did find it difficult when he first took over because players do look at you slightly differently, they don’t talk freely around you, they’d be quite guarded.”

No bad-mouthing him around you?

“To be honest, I’d be a complete ally at times when I absolutely want to strangle him,” she laughs. “But I know we’re in the best possible hands, and I suppose I have the private knowledge of how much he does to get everything right. And it’s quite a family thing too: Paudie is the manager, Damien does the hurleys and my first cousin Niall does our stats.”

Tomorrow will be Murray’s eighth senior All-Ireland final, Kilkenny the opponents as they were in 2009 when she won the last of her medals.

And her county is edging closer to Dublin’s record total of 26 titles. “Just two away,” she smiles. “We’re a proud county too, we’ve had so many legends play for Cork, when you go into an All-Ireland final, and you look at the jersey, you think of those who have worn it before. It’s a privilege and an honour to be there.”

And she’d like to be there as long as possible.

“I turned 31 recently, so people have been asking me about retirement.

“You’re retired long enough. I’d regret it if I gave it up too soon. When I do retire, it’s going to be a scary thing, it’s almost about finding out who you are again. Because the thing is, I don’t know who I am without camogie. It’s been my life.”