Of the thirtysomething questions Katrina Mackey fields during a 12-minute chat in advance of the All-Ireland final, one gets a longer answer than the rest.
It explains how the Douglas star is in her 17th year of top-level camogie and preparing for her 12th All-Ireland final. Win, and she will pocket her eighth Celtic Cross. She already has that many All-Star statuettes. In all 11 finals she has played, Mackey has worked the scoreboard.
After the semi-final win over Waterford, in which Mackey contributed four points from play, manager Ger Manley revealed their nickname for the iconic full-forward: the GOAT.
Off the field, she has earned a PhD in organic chemistry and works as a development chemist for Thermo Fisher Scientific.
So what is it that drives her to keep going year after year?
“It’s a number of things, really. I’m so used to it, it’s my routine.
“You love going out every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday training. The buzz of it is just brilliant.
“Like the winter is nice to have the break, but then you’re itching to get back again.
“It’s a really competitive set-up, so every year I go into it, I feel I need to be better, because there’s always going to be two or three new girls coming into the panel.
“This is the best time of the year, the best two weeks. What you’re aspiring to do from the start of the year is to get to the final, and these are the best two weeks of training.”
Manley reckons that Mackey would excel at any sport she turns her hand to. It’s just fortunate for Cork that camogie is the game she took to her heart. And vice versa.
Every night when Mackey heads out for training, she’s ready to be tested. Most of the time, that examination is at least as rigorous as any championship match.
Watching a few minutes of a training game on the Castle Road, Mackey ends up on the ground battling for possession with a defender on her back. No whistle is sounded. It’s just the preparation they need.
“It’s very physical in training,” she laughs. “I’d say some of the backs play on the edge, and they could be fouling at some stages!
“But that does us good going into games then, because you mightn’t necessarily be getting the frees, and the backs could be really touch-tight on you and pulling the jersey.”
Is it tougher than some championship games?
“Oh yeah, definitely some of the training sessions. The forwards are always at a disadvantage as well. We’re always playing against more backs. There’s always an extra player, so that can be tough as well. But it prepares us well for big games.
“It is very physical and very intense, but you have to stand up to it, and if you don’t do that, you’re not going to perform on match day.”
Given how teams set up against Cork’s treble-chasers, there’s no chance of them getting caught out by a sweeper system. In fact, it’s become the norm.
“We practice that in training every night,” says Mackey. “Waterford had a plus-three at some stages, so it was difficult to adapt to that, but I think we got right there in the second half.” How do they adjust in those scenarios?
“You can’t launch the ball in from too deep. You have to run it through the lines and draw the defenders out to create the space inside.
“It’s not always easy to see that, like in the first half against Waterford. It’s nice to reset at half-time. You can go out in the second half and change it up. But you have to be able to adapt on the field to what’s going on as well.”
The concise precision of her answers mirrors Mackey’s economy of movement and accuracy on the field.
She has had to overcome hamstring, shin, and hip injuries earlier this year, missing the League final victory over Galway.
“I can manage them. I know my body better than anybody else, so that just comes with experience.
“It’s definitely tougher in terms of recovery. If I did a tough session, it would take that extra few days to recover, or from a game as well.
“But I’ve gotten better at that, just being really conscious of my recovery. That’s important to me.”
Mackey scored the crucial goal in last year’s final, although it’s the 2017 decider, when she assisted the winning point for clubmate Julia White, that stands out as her favourite Croke Park memory.
It’s extra special, too, getting to travel every step of the journey with her twin sister, Pamela, by her side.
“When she took the year out in 2022, I did miss her that year, so it was nice to have her back the last couple of years. She’s doing better than ever.
“She wanted the break, but then she just missed us training and the competitive nature of it.”
As a corner-back and an inside-forward, they may have chosen different ends of the pitch, but they’re cut from the same cloth.
