The helmet came flying off at the final whistle on Sunday evening as Ashling Thompson dropped to the Croke Park turf in elation.
Her sixth All-Ireland senior camogie final win, a decade after her first, brought euphoria, joy, relief and all sorts of emotions with it.
“There are a few pictures where I look like I was crying but I don’t think I was,” Thompson later claimed, as she received her Player of the Match award on RTÉ TV.
A few tears were to be anticipated after the 24 months or so she put down.
It wasn’t certain we’d ever see her again in red after she suffered ACL damage in the weeks after the 2022 final defeat to Kilkenny. She was 32 at that stage and had already done it all, winning four All-Irelands, including one as captain.
Two years on, and now 34, she started all nine of Cork’s championship games this season, from the start of the Munster championship right through to Sunday’s three-point All-Ireland final defeat of Galway.
She played in all of Cork’s league games too, starting four and coming on in another. And she didn’t just fill the jersey, she excelled, in a range of positions across the half-back, midfield and half-forward lines.
“Over my entire career, I’ve never appreciated it as much as I have this year,” said Thompson. “It’s just been a very emotional journey. Look, it’s definitely the sweetest. I’ve worked my ass off to get to where I am right now. I feel that even at 34 years of age, I’m probably the fittest, mentally and physically, that I’ve been.”
Which is why, even at this early stage, she can say she’ll be back again in 2025 when Cork will challenge for that elusive three-in-a-row.
“Yeah, for sure,” smiled Thompson.
It wasn’t just the ACL injury two years ago that left us wondering if we’d see the Milford stalwart in red again.
It was Thompson that had the opportunity, albeit a devilishly difficult one, to tie up the 2022 All-Ireland final with an attempt for an equaliser five minutes into stoppage time.
Her strike flew wide at the Davin End and, when Ray Kelly blew for full-time moments later, a distraught-looking Thompson started walking in the direction of Cork’s dressing-room and didn’t stop.
To her credit, she came back out to watch Kilkenny raise the cup and both consoled her colleagues and was consoled.
“Those moments happen,” shrugged Thompson. “I always remember Amy O’Connor saying in an interview afterwards that she still wouldn’t have wanted anyone else on the ball with that shot at the end, and that’s the attitude that we have, it goes through the team. That’s the sort of respect that we have for each other.
“And do you know what, it actually completely rolled off me [the miss]. Things like that, you have to take it on the chin and move on. There’s no point dwelling on it. Sport is cruel but, at the end of the day, I have six All-Irelands in the bag now, so moments like that are worth it.”
For a serial winner with the competitive spirit she possesses, it was simply losing games and finals that got to her the most.
“Obviously we went five seasons nearly without an All-Ireland and at that point I think we kind of forgot how to win,” she said. “It’s not that I ever thought, ‘Look, I’m going to walk away from this’. It was more that you get to a point where you’re just sick of losing.
“We lost a lot of players, a lot of strong players in one year and the new girls that came in, that transition was going to take time. It took the bones of five years for that transition to come through.”
This year’s Cork team did it in style too, registering 18 goals in their seven-game All-Ireland campaign, and two more in Munster.
Naturally enough they were favourites approaching last weekend’s O’Duffy Cup decider though the suspicion was that they may be a little undercooked. Which is perhaps why Galway won the first-half by 0-10 to 0-9?
“That’s what you expect when you get to an All-Ireland final,” countered Thompson.
“I wouldn’t say we had it easy in the championship, I think we set a massive tempo for any opposition that we came across. People probably said that we hadn’t been tested but I think we just brought the game to another level.
“In fairness to Galway, I think they matched that. They threw the kitchen sink at us and to get over the line the way we did, I’d rather win an All-Ireland any day like that than to win it by 15 points.”
