THIS IS MOSTLY hurling and camogie country.
Think South Tipperary, think small ball more so. Throw in the border with Kilkenny, and there’s no questioning it.
But in Mullinahone, football’s growing prominence shines through.
The Tipperary club are contesting their second All-Ireland ladies club football final in as many years on Saturday, lining out in the first-ever club decider to be held in Croke Park.
They face Longford Slashers in the historic intermediate showdown, having fallen short against St Jude’s at junior level last year. They dusted themselves off, and rose through the ranks — a grade higher — at Tipp and Munster level once more.
“It’s a great success story,” Mullinahone LGFA chairperson Gráinne Dunne tells The42. “We’re only a small little place. Mullinahone is a small little village in the middle of nowhere, really. It’s a big deal.”
Dig a little deeper, and this is a return to the spotlight. A re-emergence, of sorts.
Mullinahone LGFA, in its current form, was founded in 2002. Dunne, amazingly, was chairperson back then too. “I have had breaks, though,” she laughs. It was the brainchild of Helena O’Meara — Dunne’s sister-in-law, who was keen for her daughters to play football — and started its impressive incline with U12 and U14 teams.
But ladies football in the village goes way back. Mary O’Shea, the current intermediate team manager, was one of several players who would have represented Mullinahone in local tournaments before the Sliabh na mBan club was formed in nearby Grangemockler in 1977.
“For a lot of us, football did start in Mullinahone, but then in the 70s it really got going,” Dunne explains.
“A lot were playing with Sliabh na mBan and when we set up the juvenille section in Mullinahone in 2002, some of them came to us and asked would we would we consider an adult team.
“In 2003, there was the first adult team in Mullinahone and they started off from there, from Junior C. It’s taken 20 years, if you look at it, from 2003 up to now… we’re senior B now in Tipperary but it’s taken 20 years to reach that level.”
Alongside the adult team, there’s the full deck at underage and 160 members.
Delving deeper into the history and background, Dunne covers all bases. A former Dublin inter-county player herself having starred for Portobello after relocating to the capital, she has a positive word for everyone: Mullinahone’s burgeoning list of Tipperary representatives through the years, long-time coaches, committee members, the support of the GAA club, and the underage teams’ success.
“There’s a lot of connections there with players that we have currently, their parents would have played,” she nods, outlining the links and reeling in the years as she assesses the countless changes.
“Football was very different back then than it is now. Now, its profile is obviously much more highlighted. It’s become very popular. Now, you have all your strength and conditioning, your nutrition, your tactics, your analysis, all that’s going on now, whereas we trained, we played and we partied. That’s what football was. It was a very social thing, and I think it still is very social. That’s a good thing for young girls.
“The big thing with with ladies football is to get the commitment from them. And I do think Covid had a huge bearing on that… sometimes it’s just a group of girls coming together at the right time and I think that’s what’s happened.”
Now, and then.
“Football has always been really strong in Mullinahone, even men’s football, down the years,” she continues. “Was it six players from Mullinahone on the Bloody Sunday team that would have played in Croke Park?
“Football would have always been very strong, and ladies football was always there. But I suppose the profile of ladies football has changed so much that people in Mullinahone don’t even realise the amount of girls that played football for years. There was probably girls that played for years that nobody knew about.”
Of course, there’s a camogie flavour to it all. There’s no shortage of crossover with the Windgap club and parish across the border on Noreside.
Dunne lists off those representatives, which include Kilkenny All-Ireland winning camógs Denise Gaule and Michaela Kenneally, and recalls how the link was originally forged through Poulacapple National School on the county divide.
“Windgap girls would have played football with Mullinahone and then some of the Mullinahone girls would have gone up to play camogie in Windgap, because there was no football in Windgap and there was no camogie in Mullinahone.
“There’s still no football in Windgap, but there is a camogie club in Mullinahone. We have underage camogie, we have no adult team.
“The school in Poulacappall is right on the border and the kids would be half Tipperary and half Kilkenny,” she adds. “If Tipp and Kilkenny were in the All-Ireland, they’d have half the school decorated in Tipp and half in Kilkenny. They’d wear the Kilkenny and Tipp jerseys. It’s a good rivalry.”
All green and red for Mullinahone on Saturday, though, she assures with a smile, encapsulating the buzz around the area.
There’s the flags and posters throughout the village, coaching sessions in the schools, player profiles on social media; you name it.
A second consecutive All-Ireland final is an incredible achievement and highlights the rise through the ranks, the Croke Park factor adding another dimension.
“It’s tremendous,” Dunne concludes. “It’s a brilliant story and a journey, as they call it.
“Last year nobody, would have envisaged getting to an All-Ireland. The support in the community was great. We had great support at all the matches, people that travelled, they came out then to support the girls when they came back after the Munster final, we had a great big parade up through the village, speeches and the whole lot up at the GAA field. This year has been similar. It wasn’t envisaged that you’d go as far but it’s worked out. I suppose a little bit of luck along the way also helps!
“The support, both at the matches and financially… people have been just so generous and so good to to the club. It’s brilliant. It’s history, really. The whole thing is history, because it’s never been achieved before. They’re the first Mullinahone team of any sort to go out and play on Croke Park.
“It’s amazing, I think it’s wonderful. And there’s great work being done between the GAA and the ladies football, and it’s great that it’s all coming together the way it is.”
