Cork Basketball: Annaliese Murphy playing better than ever after recovering from injury
Annaliese Murphy in action for The Address UCC Glanmire against Trinity Meteors. Picture: Larry Cummins
AFTER the heartbreak of a serious injury and being out of action for nearly a year, life has come full circle for UCC Glanmire basketball player Annaliese Murphy.
The Glanmire native has recovered from a serious Achilles issue that threatened her career and is now filling up the stats sheets in the Women’s Super League. For good measure, made her Euro-Cup debut with the Irish team against a star-studded French side in the National Arena two weeks ago.
Murphy showed all her determination and strength to recover from injury and perform better than ever. Just 23, she has been with the Address UCC Glanmire team in the Women’s Super League for seven years and involved with the Irish senior panel for the last three seasons.
She had a very impressive underage career with club and country winning multiple national trophies. Murphy also won an U18 and U20 European sliver and bronze medals before her injury.
She showed all her determination and strength to help her club to two league titles and a National Cup in the last two seasons after her return from injury.
“I picked up my injury while training with the Irish team in May 2021 in Dublin,” Annaliese said. “I knew it was a serious injury as soon as the physio did the Achilles test on it, as I was in extreme pain.
"She told me it was very serious, however, I didn’t know how difficult the whole process would be as I never had a serious injury in my career, so I was pretty much in the dark.
“I went to Santry in Dublin for an appointment a few days later and had surgery later that day, so that was the start of my recovery.
“I was lucky that I had plenty of support as all my teammates with Glanmire, my Irish team coaches, my club coaches, my Irish teammates, my friends and family all reached out to me, and they were all a great help throughout a very difficult time.
"As it was my first serious injury it was very important to have that support network around me and it was also just important to have those people to push me when needed.
“I am so thankful to my physio Dearbhla Breen, my local doctor, and also the doctor in Santry who looked after me so well and gave me the great advice and the great treatment I needed during my rehabilitation.
“I had exercises to do every day that my doctor and Dearbhla gave me, and I increased the time period as time went on."
She found watching training and matches week-in, week-out, without being allowed to play or participate very frustrating at times.
"My teammates and coach Mark Scannell were brilliant with me keeping me involved in everything and that made a big impact during my process mentally to be honest."
She would encourage any young player who picks up a serious injury to follow the instructions of the professionals and take the small wins as a huge step in your process.
“I returned to playing in February 2022 but was on restricted minutes starting with two minutes a quarter so it was tough to adjust because the game is so quick-paced that I felt the time went straight away by the time I had gotten into the game.
“I’m very proud of all my accomplishments and I just want to thank everyone that helped me get to this position, coaches, teammates, friends and most importantly family who helped me through this whole process.
“I plan to keep training hard with my club team The Address UCC Glanmire and further develop my game and continue to strengthen my skills through Irish training, club training and individual training.
"Hopefully, I can make more senior international appearances in the future so I can keep learning from playing some of the top teams in Europe and that in turn will help my club career in every way possible."
It was also a very special occasion for Annalise when she received the news of her call-up for the French game as the same day her sister Kellyann gave birth to her first niece Aria Hannah Healy.
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