YOU GET THE feeling this was the most satisfying yet.
Dublin were crowned All-Ireland senior ladies football champions for the fifth time in seven years after a dominant win over Kerry yesterday.
It was their first Brendan Martin Cup success since 2020, Meath stunning Mick Bohan’s five in-a-row chasers the following season. A disappointing All-Ireland quarter-final exit at the hands of Donegal ensued last year, along with no shortage of player turnover.
They timed their run to perfection this year. After powering past Donegal and Cork, by 15 and 12 points respectively in the quarter- and semi-finals, they made it third time lucky against the Kingdom in 2023 after league and championship defeats.
June’s 2-8 to 1-9 group game defeat at Parnell Park was a feisty and physical encounter, with an over-and-back commencing between both camps in the build-up to their first All-Ireland final meeting.
In the middle of Bohan’s post-match press conference, he brings it up. He’s speaking about the importance of work-rate and fight when he stops, and changes tack.
“I said this to the media, and I have to get it off my chest, it drives me insane in the women’s game – I used the word bullied. I’ve been a teacher for 33 years. And I know what bullying means on a sports field, and what it means off it.
“We were bullied in Parnell Park. No playing the media, no arragh, begorrah stuff – that was a fact. We were beaten to ball, pushed off the ball – we got a lesson. We knew that day we had to stand up to that. We had to become more physical in the contest. That’s the way you want this game played.
“I’m listening to the World Cup soccer at the moment and they’re talking about over-physicality – nobody bats an eyelid. That is the way the game is supposed to be played.
When that is said, don’t just take the statement – analyse it. Was it over-physical? Were they beaten physically? That’s not a bad thing. Because we want more contact, we’ve said that all along. But we got a huge lesson that day in Parnell Park.”
“From the start of the year they were the best team in the country, bar none,” he added on Declan Quill and Darragh Long’s Kerry.
“For me, they had the marquee forward. But here’s sport for you, Leah Caffrey didn’t lie down for the last eight or 10 weeks, go away and decide that Louise Ní Muircheartaigh or any other forward was going to be the best forward in the country.
“I look at the leaders that have just jumped out: Martha Byrne, Jennifer Dunne, Carla Rowe – they were the group who were chasing the main pack when we came in and they have just grabbed this thing by the scruff of the neck.
“This is as pleasing as it gets in sport.”
The interview began in a more straightforward manner, reaction to the game where Dublin laid the foundations for their latest All-Ireland success through a superb first-half showing.
“Incredible,” Bohan reflected in the bowels of Croke Park. “I thought their work-rate was immense.
“We’d obviously been on the receiving end twice from Kerry – we know how good they are. We were on our knees back in October, November time, we were trying to maximise everything we had.
“Genuinely, and the group will tell you, we were just trying to make this thing competitive. There’s a bit of knowledge around the scene in this camp. The likes of Frankie Roebuck, Shane Kearney, Paul Casey and Derek Murray, guys who have soldiered with the lads teams. And that bit of knowledge helps. As Frankie kept telling me all year, you don’t have to have the best deck to win the card game.
“We knew [Kerry] were going to battle. Sami Dowling came in this year with S&C, brought a new level to it. So we’ve seen that in all of the sessions, they just work their backsides off. That’s the most important trait in sport.”
This must be right up there for the Clontarf clubman?
Bohan has been been at the helm since 2017 when Dublin overturned three All-Ireland defeats to Cork to unprecedented success. He previously managed the team in the early noughties, while he’s enjoyed other glittering stints across Dublin GAA.
“This isn’t about me. We have had an unbelievable group of players. The work my management team have done, I have called on every favour that ever was done in my life to get to assemble this group of people to get us to be successful and the knowledge we have in this management team to help this group get better, I will never forget this.”
Of yesterday’s panel of 30, 11 made their senior inter-county debuts in 2023 with several others newcomers to the panel.
They fill voids left by an array of All-Stars and All-Ireland winners due to retirement and other reasons: Lyndsey Davey, Noelle Healy, Siobhán McGrath, Sinéad Goldrick, Niamh McEvoy, Niamh Collins and Ciara Trant among those.
Bohan was non committal on his own future and he also referenced a raft of ACL injuries, to Nicole Owens, Hannah Leahy and Jess Tobin — the latter feared to be the “nail in our coffin”. But the resurgence has been admirable, and this perhaps the sweetest to date.
“I look at Niamh Donlon (who) played her first competitive game for us five weeks ago in a challenge game against Mayo,” he concluded. Five weeks ago and she’s after playing in an All-Ireland final and from what I could see gave a fairly decent account of herself.
“Niamh Crowley, her first season out of minor, you’d put her in your pocket – she’s 5ft3in. She has a heart of a lion but that’s the point. They took them under their wing. I haven’t seen this before in a team. They were like big sisters to them and they taught them so much. This one is sweet.
“I don’t know if I have ever been as proud of a group and I just cannot wait for the next couple of days just to enjoy their company, tell some of the tales that took place during that time because we had a lot of really really dark days.”