Cork captain Aoife Murray has a mantra to live by.
"You just never know what happens in life. We always say ‘why think about tomorrow when you can enjoy today?’ So that’s what I’m going to do."
She's just guided her county to a second consecutive O'Duffy Cup which brings her own personal tally of senior All-Ireland medals to nine. They've edged out their rivals Kilkenny by just one point in the last two All-Ireland deciders and talk of a three-in-a-row has already begun.
But records and medal counts are not this goalkeeper's bag. She's panting and starving as she comes into the post-match press conference and her first priority is getting something to eat having not been fit for dinner earlier.
Murray has just turned 35 and has plenty of miles racked up, but the prospect of becoming captain of Cork for the 2018 season brought about a 'what if' moment for her after she struggled with a knee injury over the last two years.
"It’s been a mad 12 months and it’s amazing what can happen," she says.
"I left here [Croke Park] last year thinking I might never get the chance to do that and as we said in the dressing room, we’re extremely fortunate people to get this opportunity to live this life.
"When the captaincy came about, I suppose I always dreamed about it since I was a kid. The first four or five months were extremely difficult and didn’t seem to settle down. But I suppose I was very lucky with the likes of Dr Eanna Falvey in Santry, they persevered. "
She had waited a long time to lift the O'Duffy Cup as the Cork captain, but after all the anticipation, the moment came and went rather quickly.
"Before you know it you’re up there. I was emotional afterwards but I don’t know what hit me when I was going up the steps and I was balling crying. I was thinking, ‘Jesus Aoife pull it together. You’ve dreamt of this all your life don’t mess it up.’
"And then a couple of my cards got stuck together and one of those was congratulating the [Cork] intermediates [who also won an All-Ireland] even though I only found out the result of the intermediates just after the game.
There's some bandaging on Murray's left wrist when she comes into the room, displaying the letters SA on the front along with the number 360.
The letters symbolise a friend of Murray's called Sallyann Shannon who died when she was just 17 but who is always on Murray's skin when she plays a game.
"It stands for Sallyann, my teammate who died years ago. I always put her on my wristband and it just keeps her going," she explains.
"It just reminds me that sometimes in the heat of battle you can lose the head. I look down to it and she always made me laugh for the 17 years she was alive.
"She always made me laugh because she did something stupid or said the wrong thing at the extremely right time. It reminds me to look down at her and it kind of brings a bit of reality to the situation. I always smile when I see it.
"Unfortunately she passed at a very young age but we all made a promise that we’d keep her going. She was certainly up in the thick of things and she’d be keeping the celebrations going.
"Hopefully she’s looking down laughing."
Murray finished the All-Ireland final with a point to her credit after taking a penalty in the first half. The intention naturally was to go for goal but she didn't feel right after the pick-up and opted for the safe option of drilling the ball high and over the bar.
Her teammates turned to congratulate her on the way back to the goals as if she had scored a goal while Murray was happy to come away with a score instead of nothing.
"We have a saying that it takes three points to beat a point so I knew Kilkenny were going to have to score two points to beat it. And there was no point, if I didn’t make the right connection, they were was just going to go down and attack us.
"It was the right decision at the time."
Cork have the slight advantage over Kilkenny following the third installment of their rivalry in All-Ireland finals, and Murray knows there's nothing she can say to her opponents to ease their suffering other than to express her respect for the challenge they brought to Croke Park.
She's not thinking about much beyond the celebrations to come over the next few weeks and months as Cork reflect on another season as the All-Ireland champions.
She said: "I suppose we all had to be soldiers out there. We’d all like to be artists but soldiers get you over the line."
