“AH JESUS, LADS… c’mere, tell me about it again. I can’t even remember.”
Wexford Youths captain Kylie Murphy was understandably in flying form after scoring the winner in her side’s dramatic 3-2 FAI Cup final win over league champions Peamount United. It was all a blur, she couldn’t recall the decisive moment.
A true leader on and off the pitch, she’s fascinating to listen to. Speechless at times, but can’t say enough in other instances; she’ll say it exactly as it is. Raw. Honest. And so, so genuine. And it was rather fitting that it was she, who has given so much to this brilliant club, that scored the decisive goal at the Aviva Stadium yesterday.
After Lauren Kelly nailing two excellent efforts in the first half, and Peamount twice responding, it was Murphy’s 64th-minute finish that ultimately decided the showdown.
The reporters huddled around the Carlow native briefly remind her of how the goal went; she made a lung-busting run to get on the end of a beautiful Rianna Jarrett through-ball in the box, took one perfect touch and slotted into the bottom right-hand corner.
“I seen the gap,” Murphy recalls. “I seen Rianna kind of pulled the centre-half across and it just opened, thankfully, and I got there. It was super of Rianna to open up and see that pass, it was just incredible.
I just kept thinking, ‘Just don’t fucking fuck up,’” she roars laughing, the excitement really taking over. “That’s all I kept thinking, just take a good touch and place it. That’s all that was going through my head.
“I can’t even believe I got it in that side of her [Peas keeper Niamh Reid Burke], I think she was a bit to that side of the goal from what I can remember. I dunno.
“But look, I’m just so thankful it went in. It’s amazing. It’s incredible to score in the Aviva, not only score but score the winner. It doesn’t really matter who scored it, for that ball to go into the back of the net was just incredible.”
Here's the goal that has Wexford Youths ahead in the FAI Women's Cup final #RTEsoccer pic.twitter.com/pDHht0RaIb
— Soccer Republic (@SoccRepublic) November 3, 2019
Incredible is one word she kept on using. But that’s exactly what it was.
“Personally, it was incredible because I didn’t really feel like I put much of a stamp into the game,” she later added when asked how good it was for her to bag the goal.
“I kept trying and trying to get on the ball but I just felt like I wasn’t in the game as much as I would have liked to be in it. To me, it was one chance and I had to put it away. It was now or never, like.”
And a word for the brilliant Jarrett, who so cleverly played her through and made the dream goal a reality: “Rianna’s Rianna, she’s fantastic.
“We’ve seen what she’s done in the last few weeks, she’s really coming to. Her physique, her soccer, everything is just exceptional. But no matter how big and how good Rianna gets, we are never ever going to be a one-person team.
We’re a team, we’re a family, we all do it together. It will never be one person; it’s not just the senior players or the younger players or the better players, everybody needs to fill in. It’s everyone.
“Tom doesn’t make Rianna feel like she’s exceptional or she’s ahead of the pile, everybody has a job to do in that dressing room and we went out and did it today.”
The 31-year-old has been around long enough at this stage that she knows exactly how to talk the talk as well as walk the walk. In an intriguing pre-match interview with The42, she covered a wide range of topics but made sure one or two things were clear ahead of the big day:
1. Wexford Youths were underdogs going into the game.
2. If they hadn’t taken the silverware yesterday, 2019 meant nothing.
There’s a laugh and a joke among reporters after the 90-plus minutes — ‘Some underdogs Wexford were’ — while Murphy smirks when she’s greeted with that.
“That’s the thing, everybody always thinks we’re underdogs but we never do,” she said.
“That’s the difference. We’re always being put down. We were underdogs last year going in after winning two trophies. We will never ever believe that we’re underdogs. We’re happy enough for people to talk about that but it’s different in the dressing room.”
“It’s just not good enough,” were her exact words in conversation with The42 about the season that’s been ahead of the Peamount showdown. 2018 treble champions Youths finished third in the league, 15 points adrift of the winners, and lost the League Cup final to Shelbourne.
So was yesterday the first time it was good enough this season?
“It’s better,” she says to a few laughs. She’s deadly serious though. Her, and Wexford’s standards are so high.
Not good enough for us, but look, we’ll take it like. Three trophies last year, one this year; you do the maths. To us, it’s not good enough but we’ll take it.
“It’s the only trophy we got to pick up this year, we were in another cup final and unfortunate not to win it but these things happen. All credit to Peamount picking up the National League, it was super.
“We’re just delighted to have been given a chance to come here and compete, I really feel like we did.”
Murphy was full of praise for her entire team, from the “lethal” two-goal hero Lauren Kelly — “You see how calm she was? It was like they were in slow motion going in, and she is like that in life. She’s so laid back she’s nearly asleep, that’s just Lauren all over” — to the “unbelievable defenders,” and her inspiring midfield partner, Edel Kennedy.
She paid tribute to Tom Elmes; how his game plan and formation of a diamond around the middle and two girls up top was “spot on” and hurt Peamount, and touched on how their experience of the big stage definitely helped.
In true Kylie Murphy fashion, she also praised the opposition after a fierce battle: “Credit to Peamount, they never gave up, they came fighting. It shows what we have in our locker and in our dressing room… it’s just relentless. We went ahead twice and they came back and we just wouldn’t lie down.”
The skipper was just so pleased to see everything come together when it mattered most, as her side finished the season on a high with some much-needed silverware.
Just how important was that?
“It’s incredible. It’s so, so important. Breaking that Peamount duck [James O'Callaghan's side beat them three times this year] — not only that but if you take Peamount out of it altogether, it just would have been a really, really, really bad year this year if we didn’t pick up one trophy.
It’s incredible going into next year because now we have something to build on, now we know that it wasn’t such a bad year. We finished strong. I think finishing strong is such a big thing for going into next year.
“We’ll just take a well earned break, and onward and upwards.Keep trying to build.”
But only after they enjoyed last night.
“Ah no, I’ll go home early,” Murphy concluded with a cheeky grin, as she returned to the dressing room to rejoin the celebrations.
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