Our players gave it everything says Armagh camogie manager

By Niall Gartland

MISSION accomplished for PJ O’Mullan and the Armagh camogs. On Sunday, they edged Cavan in a colossal All-Ireland Premier Junior Championship final at Croke Park – and in doing so they achieved sweet redemption for last year’s defeat on the big stage to Laois.

They’d also suffered their fair share of heartache on other occasions in the famous old stadium down the years, so there was no question of leaving anything to chance in the preparation stakes, and after that, the result from their perspective would hopefully take care of itself.

It wasn’t all smooth-sailing but some incredible late interventions, including a phenomenal block by Eimear O’Kane and point-blank save by Ciarraí Devlin, proved pivotal and the rest, as they say, is history.

The result marked a reversal of their group-stage defeat to the Breffni County earlier in the campaign, and manager PJ O’Mullan attributed Sunday’s 0-17 to 0-15 to sheer hard work and dedication.

“Look, Cavan are a good team with a lot of good players, and that was well documented. They’d already beaten us by nine points earlier in the year, so it was just going to take a collective effort. I think the difference yesterday compared to the group stage match was that our work rate was just through the roof, along with our hunger and desire. I think in those areas, that’s where we possibly pipped them.

“I have to say, the effort from the semi-final to the final – you talk about people training like dogs, those girls put their lives on hold. No stone was left unturned to try to get the result, and thankfully for all of them, it worked out.”

On their late heroics when Cavan threw caution to the wind, O’Mullan commented: “We wasted a few chances yesterday as well, so we could maybe have been further in front than we were. It was backs to the wall at the finish. Our defence was just immense. There was just no way we were getting beaten. If they could put a leg in, a head in, they put it in.”

One of the subplots was the performance of teenager Eimear McGeary, a late inclusion. She scored two fantastic points, but again, her all-round industry was just as worthy of comment.

“She’s been brilliant all year. She missed out on the first 15 for the semi-final; we held her back, but we held her back for a reason. Whenever she came on, she was brilliant. She was just going so well in training ahead of the final, she was too good to leave out, and she put in a great performance. She was one of the players of the match, up and down the field, with two wonderful points. She came of age yesterday.”

It was also a particularly special day for Eimear Hayes, who missed out on Armagh’s All-Ireland Premier Junior final win in 2020 due to her duties as an A&E doctor in Derry. PJ thinks it’s more than likely that she’ll hang up the hurl, but if she does, Sunday marked a fairytale ending to her intercounty career.

He said: “In the build-up, I told Eimear Hayes a week and a half ago that she was playing. Other players maybe didn’t know until Thursday night. She was in for a specific reason, and she was brilliant at it. Again, it was just her experience. She was one of the players we needed to step up when the game was in the melting pot. It’s probably a fairytale ending for Eimear. We’ll probably not see her in an Armagh jersey again, unfortunately, but what a way to bow out.”

Redemption for last year’s All-Ireland final defeat to Laois was a major motivating factor throughout the season. It mightn’t have always been the primary consideration on a week-to-week basis, but it was always there at the back of their minds.

“That was the target. We talked about it at the start of the year and parked it until after the league. We told the players it wasn’t to be mentioned, but then when we won the league and got promoted, after Ulster Championship we had a meeting and said, right, there’s the target.

“The other target was get to the semi-final, and when we won the semi-final, the target was to win the final. We didn’t talk about it much, but we knew inside ourselves what the end goal was.”