WHEN EILEEN LAWLOR captained Kerry to the 1993 All-Ireland ladies football title, it put the tin hat on one of the great inter-county careers.
It was her 10th All-Ireland medal in total and bookended a period of total dominance by Kerry who cleaned up on the ladies circuit for the guts of a decade.
Since then? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. As if to put the passing of all that time into context, Kerry’s win in 1993 was their 11th ever. Neighbours Cork hadn’t won even one. Now Kerry are still stuck on 11 and Cork have 11 too. Cork had an opportunity to push ahead and claim a 12th title in 2020 but slipped up to Dublin.
Now it’s Kerry’s opportunity to return to the summit of the roll of honour, on their own, and if they can do it, and beat Galway tomorrow, then Niamh Carmody will fulfill the Lawlor role, the captain fantastic.
The Finuge/St Senan’s player comes to tomorrow’s final in an altogether different frame of mind to Lawlor in 1993 though. Whilst Lawlor – she is now Eileen Dardis, and living in Meath, the mother of former Meath player and county SFC medallist with Summerhill, Barry Dardis – was looking to hit double figures for All-Ireland wins in ’93, Carmody is desperate to simply grab her first after two final failures.
Meath did the damage in 2022, Dublin last year.
“The most motivation (personally) was just coming from a personal performance level last year,” said Carmody of Kerry’s 1-10 to 0-18 defeat to Dublin last year. “I don’t think I played great in the All-Ireland final.”
She wasn’t the only one who left Croke Park saddled with regrets. After 26 minutes of that 2024 final, Dublin led by 0-11 to 0-3. Kerry never threw in the towel and got it back to a four-point game late on but the damage had largely been done, principally by Hannah Tyrrell who scored eight of those 11 first-half Dublin points.
“We let the game go completely for the first 20 minutes,” acknowledged Carmody. “We just couldn’t get to grips with Dublin. I think we’ll learn from that as well going into this year’s final.
“We know that if we don’t get at it from the start, the game could get away from you fairly quickly. So that will be a big focus.”
The previous final defeat, to Meath in 2022, was a tough one to take too, even if Kerry were significant underdogs against the holders.
“They were a phenomenon of a team for those couple of years,” said Carmody of Meath’s back-to-back title heroics. “They really went for the counter attack and there was no team able to do it better than them. We wouldn’t have come up against a team that would have been as defensive since.”
Beating Meath then, and comprehensively too, at this year’s quarter-final stage was sweet. As was last month’s semi-final win over Armagh, who’d previously beaten Kerry in the Division 1 league final. A second-quarter burst of scoring did the trick for Kerry against the Orchard with Carmody providing two important points during that mini-blitzkrieg.
Louise Ni Mhuircheartaigh and Danielle O’Leary were terrific for Kerry in attack too though Siofra O’Shea perhaps outshone them all in Tullamore. Which took some doing considering the 12 months she’s just put down. O’Shea was captain last year and hoped to be the Lawlor figure herself but her preparations were ruined by a cruciate knee ligament injury. She came on as a second-half substitute against Dublin whilst she awaited surgery but was unable to influence the outcome.
“She’s just a phenomenal girl, a phenomenal leader within our group,” said Carmody. “The first game (after the injury) that she played against Waterford in Round 1 of this year’s Championship, she scored three points in about 10 minutes! She’s just an incredible athlete.
“She worked insanely hard to get back on the pitch. We started back in November and she would have been on the pitch beside us doing her own runs. Nobody worked as hard as her.
“It’s no surprise to anyone on the panel that she’s been able to adapt to match pace like she has. She got Player of the Match in the semi-final, her first full game back.”
Claire Thornton is another important figure in the Kerry camp, their team psychologist. After two final failures, there was plenty to work through.
“It’s shown in some of the tight games we’ve come through and the confidence that every player is playing with,” said Carmody.
With Division 1 and Division 2 titles already annexed under the joint management of Declan Quill and Darragh Long, and a breakthrough Munster title earlier this summer, their first since 2017, all that’s left now is to land that elusive All-Ireland.
“We’ve put a good bit of pressure on ourselves,” revealed Carmody. “From the start of the year, this is where we wanted to be. I think we have belief within ourselves that we can get over the line.”
