Ciara graced Croker before
WHEN ST. Martin’s step out onto the Croke Park pitch on Sunday afternoon it will be a new experience for most, but it will be the second time Ciara O’Connor has brought her hurl and helmet onto the hallowed turf of headquarters.
‘I played an Under-12 blitz there but other than that…’ the county Minor tails off. What seems like not too much experience, in the grand scheme of things, is actually more than a lot of her team-mates have managed.
Yet, probably unsurprisingly, what O’Connor knows about the venue doesn’t come from that one run-out, a half-dozen years ago.
‘When you are in the stand looking down, or when you are watching it on tele, it seems like such a big pitch,’ she said.
‘But I feel like the whole team just need to remember, yeah it is Croke Park but it is just another pitch, it’s a place where you can show your talent and show why you got there. I think as much we just need to enjoy the day that’s in it, we just need to go out and show why we got there.’
It has been a quicker journey to the top of the club game for O’Connor than it has been for most of her team-mates.
Last season, when St. Martin’s were on their way to their first county title, she was just cementing her place in the starting line-up and she had to learn quickly.
‘Straight away it’s a much faster game, you have to be much quicker on the ball, getting it into your hand. You don’t have much time, you have to anticipate rather than react to the ball,’ she said.
‘We are such a young team, bar one or two, we’ve just gained that experience from the Leinster final when we went in (in 2017), it was just like, it came on us really quickly. This year we just all believed we were well able to win it.
‘It comes back to the word belief, in all of our games we’ve finished stronger than what we’ve started, it just comes from believing that we are well able to do it, and keep pushing on.
‘Say it could be a draw, we aren’t happy with that, we want to win by one or two points, if we are up by two points we want to win by three points. It’s just pushing from one to 29 on the team, everyone just believes that we can push on and prove ourselves.’
Slaughtneil are the latest new experience for O’Connor, as she’s not faced any of them with Wexford, either under-age or last season with the Seniors, but she is under no illusions about the task ahead.
‘I haven’t really come across any of them but their whole panel, not just one to 15, they are going for their third in a row so you just know they are going to be good. They will have one or two players that they will rely on a little bit more but they are going to have one to 15 strong players.’