‘You just go out, go for your jog and you arrive home, but, unfortunately, Ashling didn’t’
Dublin camogie player Aoife Whelan at the launch of Peugeot Ireland as the new official car partner to Dublin GAA, in a three-year agreement across all four codes in Parnell Park. Photo: Sportsfile
For several months at the start of 2021, during that interminable lockdown, Dublin camogie player Aoife Whelan was one of the countless females who went for solo runs in preparation for a delayed inter-county GAA season.
Last week’s killing of Ashling Murphy, while out for a jog along the canal bank in Tullamore, brought the entire country to a horrified standstill.
For Whelan, it struck a chord – and not just because the young schoolteacher played the same sport with Kilcormac-Killoughey.
“It was very shocking to hear, she was only the same age as me,” the Dubliner reflected. “For any of the girls on the team, it hit very close to home. The likes of us, say, in that four-month gap of lockdown (last year), we were out doing our own thing, out going for our runs, and it could have been in the dark.
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“It wasn’t even in the dark, it was broad daylight that it happened. So it really hit close to home that it could have happened to any one of us on the team. Just awful to hear.”
Asked if it would make her think twice about going for a run by herself, Whelan replied: “Yeah, exactly. As I said, when we were out doing our jogs, it’s a normal thing to do. You just go out, go for your jog and you arrive home, but, unfortunately, Ashling didn’t.
“So, it would make you think twice,” she added. “Being on a team sport, you’d almost grab the girl closest to you to go out together, for your peace of mind or your parents’ peace of mind … it shouldn’t have to be that way.”
At a launch to announce Peugeot as Dublin GAA’s official car partner, Whelan welcomed Adrian O’Sullivan’s return for a second year, coming after several years of managerial upheaval. “If we want to get better and better every year, we need that to continue under the same management, to work to the same process,” she said.
