‘The time of my life’

LEGENDARY Cork footballer Bríd Stack has called time on her inter-county playing career.

The Rockchapel native is the holder of an astonishing collection of silverware, including eleven All Ireland winners medals. Given all that and given that she is still only thirty two years of age – she made her inter-county debut at sixteen – the decision to walk away was a hard one she admitted in an interview on RTÉ Radio One last week announcing her retirement.

“When you give so much time to something you love so much it’s obviously going to be a very hard decision to come to,” she told

Morning Ireland.

“Life moves on and priorities change a little.

I was so lucky to play for Cork and to experience the great times. I have had the best time of my life and everything that I have experienced has been down to my involvement with sport.

“I have travelled to fantastic places and I now have a fantastic network of friends. It’s important to stay with it for as long as you can because the benefits of it are so bountiful.

“I can look back and say there was never one training session that I regretted going to – but I would have regretted missing one for the fear of missing out.”

Stack played special tribute to former manager Eamon Ryan, the mastermind behind a decade of Rebel dominance of the All Ireland

Senior Ladies Football Championship.

“In 2004 Eamon Ryan came in as our manager, our coach. He was a bit of everything, such a well-rounded person,” she explained.

“He got a deadly bond going between all the younger players who were coming in off the back of All-Ireland minor success and the more experience players who hadn’t achieved anything close to All-Ireland glory.

“From the very start, he championed the honesty of effort and that honesty of effort was the backbone of our team for that run.”