‘It hasn't really sunk in yet’ - Fitzgerald
Premier Junior Player of the Year Aimee Collier with Marie Coady, PwC Markets Partner, Camogie Association Uachtaran Brian Molloy and GPA CEO Tom Parsons, Photo: INPHO/Dan Clohessy
Sarah Anne Fitzgerald has had quite the few weeks. She guided her club Camross to Laois Intermediate glory four weeks ago and since then she’s played three Leinster Club games where she scored a combined total of 4-17 as her side went on to win the Leinster Club Championship.
“It's unbelievable. We've tried so long as a club to try and get this and we've had heartbreak for a few times, three to be exact and then seeing other teams go on. We just said look come on we'll put our heads to the wheel and we did that and just to get over the line and to do it the way we did as well it's just, it's a great feeling, it hasn't really sunk in yet, but I'm sure tonight and tomorrow it will,” she said.
Camross got off to a superb start and had 3-3 to their name to Na Fianna’s no score. Fitzgerald admitted that you always dream of having such starts, but you’re never expecting for it to go as well as it did.
“Look, you talk these things but to come through to fruition like you know we just said at the start we're going to attack, attack. In every sort of game, you want to go out and just blitz teams apart and it doesn't always happen, but god everything just clicked for us there in the first half in particular. It was just unbelievable and that just gave us a cushion. It was a strong breeze and we knew in the second half, we were against the breeze that you know like we did have to just dig, it wasn't going to be the same again in the first half so we had to kind of dig deep and the legs are heavy, the ground is heavy so it was a battle, but look our first half really stood to us and was the reason why we're champions here today,” Fitzgerald said.
Camross defended in packs and that was evident at the end of the first 30 minutes as Na Fianna had only managed two points, one from play.
“I suppose the way the modern game has gone you're up and down the whole time, positions don't mean a whole much. I know people can be given out at times because you can hit the ball and you're hitting it back and down on top of them but look we put in huge, huge, huge work this year with our training. Arien and Larry and the lads in particular Jordan who came on board with us, I've just trained the living daylights out of us and like you know session after session and we just have been spending so much time together of late, but the work was done really over the summer, heavy, heavy running and we noticed the difference and look it came to fruition here. As Arien said, we want to peak come September time onwards, October time onwards and that's what he did with us. We didn't actually even start back until April and we were starting to get itchy feet like we want to get going and he just said trust me and we trusted him and look he's delivered here so he has and it's just been brilliant,” she added.
Fitzgerald reflected on the last four weeks and said that the Leinster quarter-final against Westmeath’s Clonkill, which was only a week after winning Laois, was a banana skin.
“Definitely look we've been on the go for the last four weeks and it's been heavy going because first of all you’ve a County Final and the mental preparation for that alone is more tiring than anything and then to come back down to celebrate that and we celebrated good and hard and then to go back into a Leinster campaign was hard. That Clonkill in particular the week after county final was just that to us was a real banana skin and I knew once we got over that I think we could go on and roll in momentum but to be honest we're really going to enjoy tonight and we're definitely going to enjoy tomorrow but I think more than anything we're going to enjoy next week being you know not having a game to look forward to,” she said.
Looking ahead, Fitzgerald says she can’t wait to get back to the training field on Tuesday night and that it’s brilliant to still be hurling with Christmas lights going up around the place.
“We'll regroup, evaluate where do we want to go and look put the heads down and two weeks’ time look more than anything it's just the fact that it's there's Christmas lights on somewhere, we're still training, still getting the hurls and it's not heavy training it's just that type of training where you're keeping the eye in and just keeping fresh it's just brilliant and I'm actually looking forward to going back to the field on Tuesday night so it's a great feeling,” Fitzgerald ended.
