By Daragh Ó Conchúir
The mental side of navigating the AIB Club Championships has often been underplayed.
To progress, you (usually) need to have achieved something significant in the first place.
Invariably, in club fare, there are more standout feats than you tend to get in the summer: first county titles, or large gaps bridged.
The challenge then is to enjoy that, share it with your people, but then, depending on the time scale involved, the reset often has to happen fairly quickly.
If there is a price to be paid for that, it is worth it to be still in the game. To be back in the field the next Monday or Tuesday night with your posse.
It feels wrong then, to be approaching a player, just a few days away from a big game, to discuss the events of just a few days earlier, and the euphoria that came with them.
Luckily, Sara Murphy and her fellow Clanmaurice players have been accustomed to smashing glass ceilings and rewriting what was perceived to be possible, and then moving on to the next examination.
They have been outliers since the club’s formation in 2011, curiosities that have long since morphed into sources of pride in the big-ball dominant Kingdom. They are an illustration of what is possible, with work and the right attitude.
On Sunday, they play Gailltír in a Munster semi-final in Ballygunner (1.30pm). The Waterford champions, with Déise stars Annie Fitzgerald, Clodagh Carroll, Kate Lynch, Alannah O’Sullivan and Laoise Forrest among their number, dethroned a De La Salle unit powered by camogie’s former player of the year Beth Carton, Brianna O’Regan, Abby Flynn, Keely Corbett Barry, Alannah McNulty and Maggie Gostl in the Suirside decider. They represent a daunting test.
But the Kerry representatives are there because last Sunday, they came through an extra-time thriller at Lixnaw’s Hermitage Park against Newcastlewest of Limerick – Rebecca Delee, Karen O’Leary, Deborah Murphy, Aoife Corbett and Ellie Woulfe are among the Shannonside elite, past and present – securing their maiden senior triumph, after making their debut at the elite level last year.
More to the point, they made history without the benefit of a run of games in the county championship. Most of them hadn’t played a competitive game of camogie since Kerry’s All-Ireland intermediate semi-final defeat by Laois on July 18 – three months earlier.
And they did so, with 16 players.
Skipper Sara Murphy, a staff admin in the HSE offices in Tralee, is more than happy to discuss Clanmaurice’s latest accomplishment. The 32-year-old has seen it all now and is part of a cohort that doesn’t believe anything is impossible and is accustomed to navigating their fairly unique circumstances.
Getting in a relieving clearance in the AIB All-Ireland intermediate club camogie final of 2024, in which Clanmaurice defeated Ahascragh-Caltra (Galway) to complete a two-in-a-row, Murphy having been player of the match in the decider (above) 12 months previously (Photos: INPHO)
She lined out with Kerry as a 16-year-old, before Clanmaurice even existed. To be playing senior camogie could never have been countenanced and yet here they are.
“We don’t have much time to sit in our laurels and enjoy the win,” Murphy acknowledges. “Obviously, we were delirious with excitement after, when we beat Newcastlewest, but Eddie (Murphy) brought us into a huddle after maybe 20 minutes of chatting to our families and stuff, and quickly brought our eyes to the next game. We trained last night (Tuesday), and there wasn’t much mentioned of the last game. We’re kind of, ‘Head down now and try our best for the Gailltír game.’”
Were they optimistic beforehand?
“I think yeah, we kind of were, secretly. We were happy with how our training had gone the last couple of weeks, and people were keeping their bodies fit and well, and just the vibe of training was great. It was great craic going to train in Currans.”
And that is a huge ingredient in their story. They love being in each other’s company. It was Murphy’s message as skipper at the interval.
“We don’t want to be sitting on the couch at home on Tuesday evening thinking, ‘What if?’ We want to be going training again.”
“I love going training,” says Murphy now. “Eddie, and Johnny (Madden) and Pete (Young) push us as much as they can, and we push each other as well. And we might only have 12 at training, but it’ll be the toughest session you put down. So coming into the game, we were confident in the work we had done.”
They knew Newcastlewest from challenge games played in the past, and that helped. But still, they had one sub – Kerry footballer, Caoimhe Evans joined recently without any camogie background but put her shoulder to the wheel in the second half.
As Murphy notes herself, their age profile means they seem to be short two or three every year to pregnancies and that is the case again this term. Those mums invariably return to the fray, mind you.
But allied with some travelling and injuries, most recently, a fractured ankle suffered by dual star Danielle O’Leary in training last week, it leaves them down to the bare bones, when their pick isn’t considerable anyway.
But it’s all part of it. People learn. At present, Murphy is bringing her football-mad Roscommon boyfriend, Conor, out for a few pucks, having bought him a hurley. If he can pick it up, she reckons, anyone can and seeing the likes of Evans and O’Leary keen to be involved says a lot about the type of culture that rules in this tight-knit group.
Celebrating with her mother, Mary Jo after Kerry’s Very Division 2A League final victory in April
It is only five years ago that Clanmaurice lost an All-Ireland junior final, having been winners for the first time in 2019. Murphy was player of the match when they won the 2023 intermediate title and after going back-to-back, they are now in amongst the cream of the crop.
“There’s a good bunch of us there that just… we just love winning, obviously. But at this point in our careers, we’re probably familiar with the big losses and the big wins, and we tend to learn that bit more from each loss.
“I remember years ago (2017), when we were trying to win a junior All-Ireland. I feel like we were trying to win it for years, and we were getting so close. And Kilmessan beat us in a replay. We were ahead in the first game and they got a goal at the end of the game. I’d still be able to explain the whole scenario of how it happened. We should have fouled her further out, and we just let her in, and she just happened to slip by us, and I remember it to this day. It haunts me. None of us will ever again let that happen again.”
After losing the replay, she was so heartbroken that she swore never to pick up a hurley again but that emotional reaction is a long way in the rear-view mirror. Murphy has been captain multiple times in the intervening years – the honour is rotated annually but they invariably return to the limpet-like defender and she will lead Clanmaurice out again on Sunday, hunger still unsated.
“We know these days won’t last forever. And there’s only so many miles in the legs for a lot of us. We want to do as much as we can, when we can.”
All the while, their style of play has evolved, in keeping with their development and the demands of playing at a higher level. There is more thought and planning now, rather than lorrying the sliotar as far away from their own goal as possible, and hoping Patrice Diggin and Jackie Horgan work the oracle. That duo are still doing the business but there is a lot more to Clanmaurice now.
Gailltír are strong but this is another challenge to be relished.
“Any player that wants to test themselves wants to mark the top forwards or the top defenders in the game. Even there this year, we (Kerry) played Waterford in the Munster Championship at senior level for the first time. I don’t even know what the scoreline was, it wasn’t pretty, but it was a big deal for us, our first year senior. I wasn’t playing that game, I was injured, but I was sickened when the physio was trying to encourage you not to play because you you want to be marking like the likes of Niamh Rockett and Annie Fitzgerald and whoever
“So we’re looking forward to it. We’ll give it a lash and we’ll see how we get on.”
