Murphy: We’re Playing With Aviva In Back Of Our Minds

For Andrea Murphy, the idea that rugby would one day become the sport through which her ambitions on the national stage are now measured still feels slightly surreal.

In just her third season playing rugby and playing in the Energia All-Ireland League Women’s Division, Murphy finds herself at the heart of a Blackrock College RFC team in full flow.

Nine wins on the bounce, chasing an Energia All-Ireland League final place at the Aviva Stadium, and carrying with her a sporting life that spans counties, codes, and generations.

Second-placed Blackrock are flying. That much is undeniable. One loss all season, the opening day defeat to UL Bohemian, now feels like a distant memory rather than a defining moment.

Since then, Niall Neville’s charges have gathered momentum with an authority that suggests unfinished business after last season’s semi-final disappointment, a campaign that ended one step short of where they believed they belonged.

This Saturday they return to Stradbrook to face Galwegians in a match that will be live streamed on irishrugby+ (kick-off 3pm), hoping that the impressive winning streak can continue.

“We’re doing really well. We’ve only lost one game, the first game against UL Bohs. So we’re going from strength to strength really. We just need to finish out the season like we’ve been doing now,” said Murphy, who is known as ‘Andi’ to her team-mates.

“Hopefully we won’t have any hiccups along the way. We’re just taking one game at a time. But obviously the big goal is to get to the Aviva by April, so that’s in our sights.”

There is a calm certainty in the way Murphy talks about it. No grand statements, no bravado, just a sense that this group understands both how good they are and how fragile success can be.

Last weekend’s clinical performance at home to Cooke, with 12 tries scored in a 76-8 win, was another marker laid down. Not only for the scoreboard but for what Blackrock believe they can become.

“I think we wanted to put our foot down, kind of be more ruthless with our scoring. You’d see the likes of Railway and other teams getting three numbers up on the scoreboard,”the winger/full-back told IrishRugby.ie.

“So, we need to get to that level as well and get plenty of tries in, which I think we definitely did at the weekend against Cooke. Great to see a broad range of scorers as well, which is really good.

“You don’t know who is going to score next on our team, and that’s great going into games. You can’t just take one player out of it. We’ve players all over the pitch scoring tries, which is brilliant.”

That spread of responsibility is one of the defining features of this Blackrock squad, and perhaps one of the reasons Murphy’s own transition into rugby has felt so natural.

She arrived not as a raw athlete unfamiliar with pressure, but as someone who had lived inside elite environments for most of her life – inter-county Gaelic football with Kerry, underage international basketball, provincial and national honours already etched into her sporting memory.

The journey to this point began far from Dublin. back home in Castleisland, County Kerry, a town where sport is stitched into daily life. Where football and basketball dominate, and where rugby existed largely on the periphery of Murphy’s imagination.

“I kind of wish I looked into playing rugby sooner to be honest. I never even considered it. Obviously growing up in Castleisland, it actually is a big rugby town.

“My dad and my brother would have played, but (I) never considered it myself. I suppose because there was no Women’s team and obviously basketball and football are huge in the town.”

Her first meaningful exposure to Women’s rugby did not come as a player, but with a physio’s bag slung over her shoulder. In 2022, she was part of the Blackrock backroom team when they won the league title, watching, observing, and absorbing from the touchlines, running onto the pitch only when duty called.

“It was only through being the physio with Blackrock, probably my first Women’s game, seeing it live, (I) would have been being physio for them. It was great to be part of it.

“I saw what it was like in the dressing rooms and how social it was and how great the S&C and all that side of things were as well.

“When I stopped playing with Kerry, it was a great set-up to get thrown into and get involved with because it was still at such a great standard of sport that I was still able to play.”

Blackrock’s head coach at the time, Ben Martin, saw something too. An athletic profile, a competitiveness, an instinctive understanding of space, and a year later Murphy embarked on a brand new journey as a rugby player.

I think they could just see that I was able to catch a ball and kick a ball, so they were happy to have me. Then I just had to freshen up on a few of the laws and I was ready to go. It was interesting.

“There’s some stuff you have to really unlearn. In football you’re often in the lead with your shoulder instead of your hand, so I wasn’t really wrapping in any tackles and had a few questionable tackles in my first few games.

“But there are aspects of the sport that do transfer well like catching a high ball. Full-back would probably be my preferred position as a GAA player. Catching high balls, kicking, all that actually came naturally enough.

“I’m still learning. There’s some things that they still teach me. It’s ever evolving, my knowledge of the sport. I still have a long way to go with it.”

That humility has perhaps been key to how quickly she has progressed in Blackrock colours, notably getting called up by Leinster for the Vodafone Women’s Interprovincial Championship, and now having a trusted role within an All-Ireland League title-contending squad.

Behind all of it lies a period of transition that could easily have left Murphy adrift. After graduating from UCD with a degree in Physiotherapy in 2021, the weekly travel between Dublin and her native Kerry became unsustainable.

She transferred to Foxrock Cabinteely GAA Club, building a successful chapter there. But the pull of Kerry remained strong, and exhausting.

“When I was in college in Dublin, I had to train with a club in Dublin because I wasn’t making it down to Kerry training during the week on a Wednesday.

“So, I transferred to a Dublin club, playing away with Foxrock Cabinteely which was fantastic. Won a few Dublin Championships, a few Leinster Championships. I had a great few years there with them.

“I was travelling home at the weekends for Kerry training which was tough. Just got too hard when I graduated as a physio.”

The decision to step away from inter-county football was not dramatic, it was practical and inevitable. What followed was a rare void for someone who had always been immersed in high performance sport. Blackrock arrived at exactly the right moment.

“It just wasn’t possible to do anymore. I just wasn’t going to make it down. Wasn’t going to be any good for me really to continue that. Just too hard. So it kind of happened naturally that I got into rugby then because I was at a loose end.

“I stopped playing inter-county football and was looking for a high standard sport to still play, and I fell into Blackrock so it was perfect timing really for me.”

Yet, for all the excitement of rugby’s discovery, nothing has eclipsed what came in 2024. Murphy’s return to playing Gaelic football with Castleisland Desmonds was meteoric, stepping back into a team she had grown up with.

She had won an All-Ireland Intermediate title with them at the tender age of 16, and more recently proved a driving force in attack to help them land Kerry and Munster Senior Championship silverware.

“Nothing beats winning with the girls you’ve grown up with, it was actually very emotional. It was just such a great moment, having my family, my friends, my neighbours all around me, and nothing will ever beat that no matter what you win.

“It was just brilliant being home again and and reconnecting with the likes of my manager at the time, Dan Kearney.

“He would have been a huge influence in all my different sporting careers. He’s always been a huge supporter of me and of all the other girls. He is the glue that keeps everything together.

“Winning with your club, I think definitely the highlight of my sporting career was winning Kerry and Munster that year. It was just unbelievable and nothing will ever top it, unless Blackrock win the title. That’s the only thing that would top it.”

That Castleisland team was captained by Ciara O’Sullivan (formerly Griffin), the former Ireland rugby captain. Someone whose influence stretched far beyond the dressing room for Murphy.

“She’s done it all. I think especially my first year with Leinster, it would have been the first year I was back with Desmonds as well. It was great to have her to bounce things off.”

The Munster and Leinster rivalry was not lost on Murphy, who quipped: “Now, she’d prefer to see me wearing red instead of blue! She was a great support, definitely. If I didn’t know what’s going on, she’d tell me to keep the head, which is great.

“She’s a great influence to have as well for all the girls on the team. She’s just a super leader, so knowledgeable in rugby and football. She’s just an excellent person all around.”

Now back in Dublin, fully immersed in Blackrock’s push for All-Ireland League glory, Murphy feels the weight of unfinished business. Last season’s three-point semi-final loss to UL Bohs still lingers, a reminder of how close they came.

For Murphy, the thought carries extra resonance. She knows what it feels like to miss out on playing in an All-Ireland final in a different code. Having left the Kerry set-up, her former team-mates ran out at Croke Park the following year, and then lifted the senior trophy just a couple of years later.

She knows what redemption might look like in a different stadium, in a different code, wearing a different jersey, but carrying the same fire. From Castleisland to Stradbrook, from a prolific Gaelic football forward to an instrumental back-three player in rugby, he rugby story is still only beginning.

Yet already, it feels like the continuation of a sporting life defined not by the code Murphy plays, but by the standards she demands of herself, and of the teams she helps carry forward.

Fuelled by depth, resilience, and the sense that this group has grown significantly through adversity, ‘Rock want to make the final this year. They have done very well to date to stake their claim, but Galwegians, this weekend, will pose its own immediate dangers.

“Galwegians are one of the teams we’ll definitely be most careful with because they did so well against UL Bohs (losing 36-24). Bohs have been the one team that beat us.

“So, we saw that result going into our away game to them and we knew we needed to perform, which we did (winning 29-5). We’re in a very fortunate position that we’ve such depth in our panel that we can replace players who are missing due to the Celtic Challenge with top quality players.

“It would be brilliant (to reach the final at the Aviva Stadium), like that’s why you play. You don’t play to lose, so we’re definitely playing with the Aviva in the back of our minds.

“You go out, you’re training every week and you’re playing every game with the All-Ireland final in the back of our heads, so that’s definitely the goal. It’d be silly to have any other goal, so hopefully we’ll be in the Aviva this year,” she added.

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