All-Ireland final loss will hurt for a long time - Aoife Donohue

These end-of-year bashes are fun but they're just not the same without a silver guest of honour.

In the case of Aoife Donohue and the Galwegians at last Friday night’s PwC Camogie All-Stars, having been within hailing distance of the O’Duffy Cup when last they were in Croke Park but seeing it lured away by Cork was tough to take.

A former PwC senior player of the year, Donohue was nominated again for the individual honour, chosen by her peers. She missed out on that too, to Cork’s Laura Hayes, but that didn’t bother her in the slightest.

The diminutive Mullagh ace was one of five Galway players to receive All-Stars and she was picking up her fifth gong.

But losing the All-Ireland to the last three points, having reeled in a six-point deficit to draw level down the stretch, remains an open sore.

"We were very close," says Donohue. "It was there, wasn’t it? It was there. It’s a pity. We got a lot right. We had a plan, obviously, and it worked fairly well. The last ten minutes were crazy, from what I remember.

"I remember the goal obviously going in, and like, you're down the far end of the pitch and all you see is the back of the net going. You don’t see anything else. Then they go five or six up, then we get ourselves back into a really good position again, and then the last ten minutes was just crazy.

"There were a couple of chances. And then I remember, definitely, Ann Marie Starr being creeled. They’re frees you have to be giving but we had chances, had a couple of wides that should have been put over the bar, one after the other.

"I think this is gonna hurt for a long time. It’s probably the one that will stick with me. We were there in '21 we won, we were there 2019, we won. We lost the Covid final all right and apart from