Doireann Murphy's goalkeeping skills honed by handball

It is more than a decade since Doireann Murphy was crowned a world champion and she has a couple of All-Ireland medals rattling around in her pocket already.

But if Clare beat Cork at Cusack Park today (3pm – live on the Camogie Association's YouTube channel) to supplant the Rebels as likely runners-up in Group 1 of the Glen Dimplex All-Ireland Senior Championship and seal a coveted berth among the last six standing, it will rank up there with anything she has been involved in.

Murphy is a top-class goalkeeper who earned the rare distinction for a netminder of being named Munster’s player of the year last December.

The Clarecastle custodian earned widespread plaudits when saving penalties in consecutive provincial championship games last year as the Bannerwomen reached the decider.

And while she modestly attributes her propensity for overcoming the odds faced with a placed ball one-on-one to "a lot of luck", there is more to it than that.

"If I was playing intermediate handball I could manage it, but it's just not feasible to play the two at senior"

Murphy herself will concede that her experience as an outfield player helpful in being able to read where a shot is intended for. But perhaps most useful are the skills honed in the handball alley. Clare is a hotbed of one of the lesser heralded Gaelic games. The legendary Kirbys were from this neck of the woods originally. Diarmuid Nash and Colin Crehan are two of the country’s top-ranked contemporary players.

Current Banner hurler Mark Rodgers was an underage star. Further afield, Kilkenny tyro Billy Drennan was an elite operator too. But like Murphy, who won her World Championship in 2012 in the under-13 doubles category alongside Ella Donnellan before securing All-Ireland minor