Linda Wall’s number four shirt is a prized possession from the 2015 All Ireland intermediate final win over Kildare at Croke Park.
“I gave away a lot of my jerseys to the club girls: jerseys, shorts and tops but I’ll never give away that jersey. I was number four so that jersey is definitely staying in the wardrobe! I have all the paper clippings and I’m going to make it into a scrapbook someday. I was given some photos as presents from Sportsfile and a few of them are hanging up.”
The long serving Ballymacarbry defender burst into tears when she lifted the Mary Quinn cup that afternoon. “We’d been at it so long, it was our third time reaching Croke Park and we were beginning to think 'will we ever win it?' We were relegated seven years previous and it was so hard to get back up senior. It was just a big relief on the day. I’m probably extra emotional anyway! The tears just started flowing and they wouldn’t stop! They were happy tears not sad ones.”
The team bus unexpectedly stopped in her home village on the way back. “We had no knowledge at all that we were going back through Ballymacarbry, we never went through Ballymacarbry when we were going to Dublin at all. Pat Sullivan and Noel O'Connor called me up to the front of the bus and they said ‘we’re going through Ballymac on the way home.’ I couldn’t believe they were saying this to me. It was amazing that they changed the route home to go through Ballymac. We were on the phones then to get a good crowd in the village!”
It was a throwback to the glory days of the nineties. “Siobhan Murphy was the last captain and I was outside Dooceys and I thought she was the bees knees getting off the bus with the cup.”
Listen back to the full interview with Linda Wall from Lár Na Páirce Queens of September with thanks to PWC Waterford.
https://www.spreaker.com/user/wlrfm/lindawallpart2
