FOR CARLA ROWE, Dublin’s All-Ireland final defeat to Meath last September hit particularly close to home.

“I’m very local to Meath,” she points out. “Right there on the border, some people would say.”

Her club is Clann Mhuire, and right beside it lies a river. The Delvin.”You could literally throw a stone and the river splits Meath and Dublin,” Rowe explains. Clann Mhuire is in Dublin, but some of her clubmates’ homes are on the other side of the border.

The right or the wrong side, you ask? That’s always a debate around those parts, with plenty of slagging dished out. “There’s one or two who still come training with their Meath jerseys on. They might go to the men’s match in a Meath jersey but a women’s match in a Dublin jersey. Not too many, I think they get too much stick for it!”

That said, there was likely radio silence on 5 September 2021.

And in the days and weeks which followed, as Dublin’s five-in-a-row dream was left dead in the water.

“Look, it was fantastic for Meath,” Rowe commends. “I saw all the support and the camaraderie they had behind it, which was great for them. But look, we’ll come back fighting this year.

“You don’t ever want to lose, but if you lose, you have to find ways of of making that beneficial. I know personally for me the hurt from last year will drive me this year.”

The post-mortem was a painful one; the All-Star forward cutting the tape after 45 minutes when watching it alone. Team analysis was forced upon them, so a full viewing – and some more – has since followed.

“We have to learn from it. As much as it’s hard, and some days you think about it when you’re driving in the car and you reflect on it, you have to learn from it and move on.

“If you go and wallow in the fact that you lost and it could have been this or that, it’s not going to get you anywhere. We’ll use the game; we learned about Meath, we learned a lot about ourselves. We would say we were disappointed for our performance on the day, it didn’t go right so look, we’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again. And if it does, we just know how we can do better to overcome it.

“It’s packed away. This is another season. There were many other seasons where we had three losses in-a-row and we learned and we grew from them, so hopefully we’ll grow faster this year.”

Rowe is hoping for the same on an individual level, too, after injury hampered her 2021.

Having gotten away scot free for most of her inter-county career to date, minus a minor quad setback, reoccurring calf tears kept her out for most of the league and resulted in a slow start to the championship.

The All-Ireland quarter-final win over Donegal saw her come back with a bang – with 2-3 and a Player of the Match display to boot – though she was stopped in her tracks by a hamstring niggle ahead of the last-four battle against Mayo.

Rowe facing Meath in the All-Ireland final. Bryan Keane / INPHO Bryan Keane / INPHO / INPHO

“It was very, very testing and very frustrating,” Rowe concedes, though is happy to report that all is pretty much in order again.

“I had club and had college which kept me going over the pre-season, which I actually was really grateful for because I think nearly when I stop..,” she pauses, then laughs. “I don’t know if there’s actually any science behind it, but when I stop, I seem to pick up the niggles, so instead I’ll just go with the mindset of don’t stop.

“All good, doing rehab and making sure I keep on top of the calf muscles so they don’t re-tear. I have a little bit of a flare-up in my hip but we’re managing it and it’s grand. It’s nothing that’s long-term or anything like that. Look, it’s only small niggles but last year showed me that you need to keep on top of these things.”

There’s plenty to keep on top of elsewhere, back in college — “for my sins,” she adds with a grin — undertaking a PME [Professional Master of Education, in secondary school teaching] in DCU.

Having had a taste of teaching through subbing, Rowe is enjoying her busy schedule through a hectic few weeks balancing inter-county and college football, along with placement and studies.

Her star-studded DCU team which includes Dublin team-mates Jennifer Dunne and Niamh Hetherton, Meath All-Ireland winner Emma Duggan and Offaly dual star Kate Kenny, to name but a few, is proving a welcome outlet and change.

But her main focus will always be on Dublin, where there’s been little of such with Mick Bohan remaining at the helm and the core group ready to go again after a solid pre-season.

“Siobhan McGrath is the only girl who I think has not returned yet,” Rowe notes. “I know she she suffered a fairly bad injury last year so look, I don’t know whether it’s giving [her] time or not, but you don’t really put too much pressure on girls at that point.

“You’ll wait to hear the news. But otherwise, yeah, full stock. We have that bit of maturity in the girls who are that bit older and then we have these new players coming in, some of who are similar to Hannah Tyrrell last year who were actually older and we’re kind of saying, ‘Where were they for the last couple of years?’

Rowe was one of several inter-county stars at the 2022 Lidl Ladies National Football Leagues launch on Tuesday. Brendan Moran / SPORTSFILE Brendan Moran / SPORTSFILE / SPORTSFILE

“And then we have a good few young girls who have come in as well, so huge. It’s pushing the standards in training, it’s setting new goals. If you‘ve someone new coming in and they’re setting good pre-season times or scores and they’re doing well in training, that’s your next goal, you’re pushing to try and beat that person.”

So it’s safe to say there’s no shortage of hunger as Dublin gear up to face Waterford in their Division 1 league opener this weekend.

A new challenge lies ahead, no longer the hunted but the hunter in championship action, as the year’s first assignment sees them out to defend their league crown.

“Look, we don’t think anything is taken for granted, or, ‘Oh, we’ll be back, we’ll get it back,’” Rowe assures. “If anything, last year showed us that nothing is guaranteed and you work really, really hard for it – and if at any point that work starts to dip, we’ll remind ourselves of the hurt.

“Yes, it is negative but it’s using that as a positive. I know all the girls are really eager to back onto the pitch, they’re eager to get back playing league games, and then we have Leinster this year which is rolling into, very quickly, championship season.

“Overall, we’re really looking forward to playing and just hopefully getting back to championship football and putting out good performances.”