Young Keohane savours the day

Oh, the agony and the ecstasy, the pain and the joy after yesterday's All-Ireland camogie final in which Cork beat Galway by 015 to 2-5. A stroll across the Croke Park pitch, to just under the New Stand, and it felt like you were walking into a wake. Family and friends everywhere, attempting to console inconsolable Galway players.

Back under the Hogan Stand, a very different atmosphere. Hugging and whooping and dancing and singing as the players of Cork watched Linda Mellerick accept the O'Duffy Cup, the county's third senior camogie title in five years.

You can always tell by their faces just how much an All-Ireland winner's medal means to a player, but Cora Keohane, Cork's outstanding young goalkeeper, tried to put the feeling into words.

"It just means the world to me. It's my first year and I'm just grateful to have made some kind of contribution to the team. We put in loads of work and I can't imagine what it would be like to lose. Everything's worthwhile now, training in the rain, giving up a social life, it's just brilliant. "It means the world to me. I'm so lucky, Linda Mellerick waited six or seven years to win an All-Ireland - I've won in my very first final."

Keohane had succeeded in breaking Galway hearts throughout much of the second half, pulling off a string of outstanding saves that denied them the goals they desperately needed to narrow Cork's lead. There was one incident late in the game when half of the Galway team seemed to take a shot at her in the space of a few seconds. She saved them all. "The big scramble around the goal? Yeah. When you see the sliotar you just hit like mad, hit like mad and it goes away eventually," she said. You'd a blinder. "Ah stop, it was scary. I can't even remember half of it now, it's just brilliant it's over. The tension in goals," she sighed. "You have to concentrate all the time - but I prefer when there are balls coming in on you, because at least you're involved and it's easier to concentrate, it's worse when you're just watching all the time."

Across the pitch, a distraught Sharon Glynn, Galway's magnificent number seven, was trying to hide the pain by paying tribute to Cork. "We gave it everything but Cork were by far the better team on the day and deserved their win, we have no excuses. Lynn Dunlea was on song today, she scored everything she stood over. I missed three or four frees, and in the second half we seemed to have three goal opportunities, wide open, but we just couldn't score."

Glynn, Galway's hero in the semi-final when her tally of 2-12 helped them to victory over Kilkenny, only came out of hospital last Sunday evening after collapsing at training the Monday before.

"I had a lung and chest infection, ah, just a few problems around there. I had some painkilling injections this morning, the left shoulder, all my left side was very sore. But that wasn't to blame.

"We'll be back though," she continued. "We're a very young side and every year you get up here makes a difference, gives you a bit of experience. This is only our third All-Ireland, we'll probably be a different outfit next time. Hopefully I'll have a few more medals in the bag by the time I'm Linda Mellerick or Sandie Fitzgibbon's age. But, today anyway, none of those things mean anything, we're going home, we haven't won."

Meanwhile, Lynn Dunlea, scorer of nine of Cork's points, wore a glazed expression of delight. "When the final whistle went and the crowd started to cheer I was literally in a daze and I don't think I want to come of it for a while," said the primary school teacher from Coachford. "Our defence was rock solid, they were fantastic, especially in the final 10 minutes when Galway threw everything at us. That was when we had to knuckle down and Cora, Eithne, Sandie, Denise and Mags stood solid and nothing got past them. They're why we're standing here celebrating now."

So are you back to school tomorrow? "No, school is actually closed, which is marvellous." Why? "There are religious courses going on, God bless them." So the senior infants of Coachford will have to wait another day to congratulate Ms Dunlea on her third All-Ireland winners' medal.