By Niall Gartland

IT was time to sit back, unwind and rewatch the footage from start to finish – Monaghan’s All-Ireland Junior Championship final victory over Mayo, a seismic accomplishment in their first year back on the camogie fields after 15 long years without a flagship senior team to call their own.

One of the vastly experienced players bridging that gap was joint-captain Marie Greenan. As pointed out by reporter Seamus McAleenan earlier this week, she scored seven points when Monaghan beat Wicklow to win the 2011 All-Ireland Junior final. Fittingly, she matched that tally last Saturday with another seven-point haul as she helped inspire her side to the Nancy Murray Cup title. It’s the stuff dreams are made of, and Greenan and her teammates made sure to squeeze out every last ounce of the celebrations.

Speaking on Tuesday, Greenan said: “It’s been brilliant with the girls. They were into day three of celebrations last night.

“It’s class having the game on YouTube. It was lovely to sit together over a few drinks and a bit of food, put it up on the big screen and watch it back, cheering, laughing and slagging each other. Poking fun at girls who gave away frees and things like that, but it’s nice that we’re in a position that you can laugh about those things!

“The craic the younger lassies are getting out of it and the experience of all the celebrations is brilliant, especially if you’ve won nothing with your club. It’s just been deadly.”

Monaghan looked on course for a convincing victory in the third quarter but the scores started to dry up as Mayo clawed their way back into proceedings. They were able to hold on though, thanks to some particularly heroic interventions.

“We were seven points up at one stage and we lost our way a wee bit. The weather was unbelievable, the heat playing in it. You’re looking at yourself playing and you think you’re doing something fast! You could see girls getting drained as the game went on a bit, but we just stuck at it. We didn’t panic. We kept grinding it out.

“The fresh legs made a massive difference. Ciara, Codi [Morgan] and Jessica [Cullen] came in and especially in that last 10 minutes they were flying. So was Codi’s mother, Michelle! The amount of ball she got in the last few minutes made all the difference and really took the pressure off at the vital times.”

When the decision was made to reassemble at the start of the year, there were naturally a few nagging doubts about whether they would stay the course. Joint-managers Darragh Madden and Freddie Williams were absolutely insistent that they wouldn’t just hold their own, but could get their hands on silverware.

Greenan said: “To come together in your first year and do something like this is unbelievable. In the league we were still getting to know each other – management-wise and team-wise. In the scheme of things, it was a short period of time to get together for the league and see where things were at.

“A few girls came in late. Some people were maybe thinking we wouldn’t stick at it, but we did. Darragh and Freddie were a big part of that. They were all-in from day one. They kept saying, ‘We will win this year if yous put the work in.’ Freddie said after we won on Saturday, ‘I told you!’ and I said, ‘I know you told me, but still!'”

That said, Greenan did have a good feeling about the game, even though they were rank outsiders. They’d lost to Mayo a number of times already this year, but they came out on top of the biggest game of all.

“I know all week I had that feeling that things were falling into place. It just felt right. We had a great training session on Sunday and another really positive one on Wednesday evening. I just had that feeling on the Wednesday, we were in a huddle at the end and you could just see it in the girls’ faces. You just felt we weren’t going to be far off.

“I knew if we got stuck in it would be a point or two either way, and thank God we held out, even though I don’t know how much added time was played! It’s just class and it’s given everyone such a lift.

“Going around meeting people and seeing social media, the amount of people who know about it now who wouldn’t have known about it before. You go around your local community with your head held high.”