FIRST, A SNAPSHOT of Meath and Dunboyne star Vikki Wall’s 2021:
- All-Ireland SFC
- All-Ireland SFC POTM
- First All-Star
- TG4 Senior Players’ Player of the Year
- Division 2 League
- Division 2 Team of the League
- Meath SFC
- Meath SFC POTM
- Leinster club SFC
- Leinster SFC POTM
- RTÉ Sportsperson of the Year nominee
- RTÉ Team of the Year nominee
Ridiculous, some say. Unmatched, the word of others.
It simply is the stuff of dreams, made all the sweeter given the context of the achievements.
What about for Wall herself?
“I know it’s literally so cliché to say but I actually just don’t think it has sunk in yet,” she tells The42 on the Tuesday of Christmas week. It feels like the perfect opportunity to reflect and take stock… not exactly. It’s still all go.
“We’re still preparing for an All-Ireland semi with Dunboyne at the start January. You’re not getting a huge amount of time to just sit back and look at it all.
“A few of us were just talking about it yesterday — it was the year since we won the intermediate, and within that space of time, you’re senior All-Ireland champions as well. It is mental, and it is the stuff of dreams. It’s been an unbelievable year like.”
Wall is on the road as we chat, as she has been all year. With the voice we’ve heard so much coming through loud and clear across the speaker, she’s making the short trip home from Dublin, having wrapped up her college commitments on her Digital Marketing Masters in DCU the previous Friday.
Truth be told, she’s hardly had a minute to breathe between everything. But being kept busy is how she likes it, and that non-stop nature of 2021 has certainly paid dividends for both club and county, and of course, for herself.
Momentum is a word Wall uses over and over, and it’s one which sums it all up.
***
The journey began in May, with Páirc Tailteann playing host to Meath’s Division 2 league opener against Kerry.
The 2020 edition had not been completed as Covid-19 first took hold on these shores, but the Royals were newcomers then after winning Division 3 in 2019. Now, they had the tag of senior championship newbies on their back, having succeeded at the third time of asking in last December’s All-Ireland intermediate final.
2021 opened with a 3-10 to 1-10 defeat to the Kingdom, the first of many “little changing moments,” as Wall puts it.
“Even though we lost it, that solidified to people, ‘Jesus, we’re not that far off the mark.’ Kerry were a senior team for years and years, they’re who you want to be playing against.
“We had been talking about it for a few years; that we want to be playing against these senior teams, and then we were finally in senior and Division Two, actually playing against them. After that match, it was like, ‘We don’t want that to happen again — knowing we were good enough to win a game, but not really showing up.’”
Another was the league semi-final against Cavan. The Breffni had been unbeaten at the time, but Meath came good in the latter stages of a tight affair to prevail to the Croke Park decider.
“In previous years, one of the things we would have identified on the Meath team was in tight games, we ended up making stupid mistakes. Let’s say we were a point or two up, we’d almost give away a silly kick-out or just get turned over coming out of our own defence. That was kind of a changing point for us in that we closed out a tight game.
“And when you get to those scenarios, and when you have more tight games like that, you just learn from experience. We knew how not to do it, but it was learning how to do it. How to win in those kind of situations.”
The impressive league final win over Kerry — 2-16 to 0-9 — which ended a seven-year wait for a return to the top-flight was another of such key junctures. That winning feeling in Croker once again, after December’s intermediate final win and the back-to-back defeats in 2018 and 2019, was “definitely a big motivator”.
Belief swelled, with momentum on their side.
That they ran 11-time All-Ireland champions Cork close in the group stages of the All-Ireland championship only increased that confidence, as did a convincing win over Tipperary as they sealed their quarter-final spot.
There, they stunned last year’s semi-finalists, Armagh, and everyone else well and truly took notice. A seven-point win may have been a shock to many, but not to those closely following the upward trajectory of Eamonn Murray’s star-studded outfit.
It was onto that semi-final victory over the Rebels then; a side that had beaten them by 40 points in the 2015 senior championship qualifiers. The most dramatic of dramatic turnarounds was capped somehow, someway by an extra-time win which sent Meath into their first-ever All-Ireland senior final.
Two goals in the last minute of normal time forced the additional period; the Royals having been seven points down after 55 minutes. Buoyed by the unexpected lifeline, they pushed on for a remarkable 2-12 to 2-10 win.
“That extra time, that was almost our third chance against Cork really,” 23-year-old Wall nods. “In the round matches of the championship, they beat us by two points and then you’re thinking, ‘Wow, you get a second chance of Cork in an All-Ireland semi-final, it’s where you want to be’.
“And then, almost by the skin of our teeth, you’re getting a third chance at them. It’s not often you do get those chances in sport. Talk about momentum — we didn’t want that little break before extra-time, we just wanted to keep going because we were starting to come together. Things started to click for us.
“And obviously it’s a dream scenario to be in.”
***
We are going to win this match.
A text message Wall sent to her partner in crime, Emma Duggan, on the bus on the way to the All-Ireland final against five in-a-row chasing Dublin. Her Dunboyne team-mate was sitting in front of her, but they would have had similar exchanges in the week build-up.
“Say going to sleep, that’d be the time I’d be thinking about matches the most and the two of us and other people on the team would be saying like, ‘Yeah, we are gonna win this.’ Just saying it out loud, I suppose, acknowledging it. It doesn’t work all the time, but it did that time,” she grins.
There’s underdogs, and then there’s Meath before that decider against Dublin. The Sky Blues were overwhelming favourites, with their opponents completely written off in some quarters.
It’s something Wall touched on in her post-match interviews in the bowels of the Hogan Stand, when all was said and done.
“There was a few things said that definitely would have motivated me, even from interviews and stuff like that from both sides,” she told a group of journalists. “There were a few comments that we were lucky to be here.”
For a lot of teams, the monumental win over Cork would have been their All-Ireland final won. But not for this special group.
“It’s funny, I think in sport you can kind of flip it both ways,” Wall reflects now. “I’ve been in situations where you are in that favourite and you can use it to your benefit.
“You can say, ‘We have to prove the standards to ourselves and be consistent,’ and stuff like that. But then obviously in the context of being the underdogs, it’s easy to use that as fuel as well, knowing that nobody expects you to win except your camp inside.
“That can, in some ways, bring the team closer together; knowing that there might not be more than the 30, 35 of you that actually believe the same thing you do. You can flip it the two ways but it’s nice to think that the people that you’re training with three or four times a week, or are in that little circle, they’re the ones that do believe. That was kind of how we managed it.”
The rest, as they say, is history.
Meath took the game by the scruff of the neck and gave the ultimate team performance; their hunger and intent clear as day from the second Wall won the throw-in and surged through the heart of the Dublin defence.
Every time she watches the match back — which has been quite a few times at this stage, she laughs — she notices something different, and changes her mind on the best performers on the day, naming several contenders.
Wall was crowned Player of the Match, but it was about much more than her. “Everyone was just consistent on the day,” she nods. “To me, I don’t think one person had a standout game for the entire game, I think it was different 10-minute periods where different people stood up. In a team sport, that’s exactly what you need.”
The scenes that followed were magical; the celebrations nothing short of electric, from the field of dreams on Jones’ Road to the reception at the Knightsbrook Hotel and across the Banks of the Boyne in the days and weeks that followed.
“I think a lot of the days merge into one now to be honest! It was unreal craic. There were definitely a few little moments throughout the week where the team would just be by ourselves with our bus driver, Derek, bringing us to different clubs and pubs and everything, homecomings and stuff like that.
“You’d just be on the bus with the team and look around — we did acknowledge that like, ‘These are literally the best days of our lives.’”
The Thursday night celebration in Dunboyne was extra special. Others may have been hitting a lull, but for Wall, standing on the stage with her clubmates on “that hometown buzz,” and celebrating with everyone she had grown up with, friends and family is a moment that will stick with her forever.
***
Other things do, but for the wrong reasons.
The low points Meath ladies football hit a few short years back are well documented at this stage. The lowest of lows, the depths of despair. In previous interviews, Wall spoke about crying to her father on the way home from matches as the Royals struggled on and on in the senior ranks.
She gives another example, which echoes those sentiments in a different way.
“Look, to be honest with you, when I first started playing with Meath football, for me, the thoughts of playing in Croke Park just seemed so, so distant. You’d be going in and watching games, being like, ‘Wow, this is outrageous. It’s the dream to play there.’
“Those first few years, it honestly just felt like it would never, ever happen — never mind a league or anything. To be here now, when you do reflect on those little moments, it makes the biggest difference.
“But then even the likes of the All-Ireland semi and league finals and stuff being played in Croke Park, it just means that there’s way more opportunities for a lot more girls to fulfil those dreams and play in Croke Park. When you play football, it’s the Mecca, like. It’s where you want to be.”
She’s where she wants to be in another sense too; in peak physical condition and at the top of her game.
After being named 2020 TG4 Intermediate Player of the Year in March, Wall used her winning interview to speak about the regular — and horrific — verbal abuse she has been subjected to on the pitch.
“To be honest from 2017 to 2019, I heard something in every single game about my weight,” she said, revealing that an opposing manager once phoned her to apologise for his words, and a woman told her mother she was “too fat to play football”.
In a recent interview with The Irish Independent, she detailed a horrific incident from the 2018 O’Connor Cup final, which comments made forced her parents to leave.
“I chatted about it with the Indo but for me now at this stage, it’s not something I think about a huge amount at all,” she picks up. “Look, when it’s affecting your Mam and Dad and stuff like that — and you say you were shocked, I was definitely shocked that day as well. But yeah, look, I think it is kind of the last laugh at this stage, and to be where we are as a county panel and just personally as well, it’s definitely an honour.
“It’s almost similar to the Meath thing – it hasn’t just happened quickly, it’s definitely been an accumulation of a period of time and hard work. It’s testament to the work that the lads have put in with us — and just myself and what I wanted to get out of myself and know what I’m capable of.
“I’ve mentioned it, but there’s plenty more girls on the team that have gone through much worse, in terms of personal matters, or their home life or anything like that as well.
“When you have somewhere like the Meath set-up to go to however many times a week and it’s an escape for a lot of people… when that kind of stuff leaks into football, it kind of maybe affects the escapism. The Meath set-up, the people and friends and family and stuff we have in there, it’s a great support system as well.”
It’s all about focusing on the future, rather than dwelling on the past, Wall agrees, well aware of the challenge ahead. Good teams win one, great teams win more.
“Yeah, absolutely,” she nods. “We’re already excited for 2022. We’re definitely not happy to just leave it as it is now.
“And I think that’s something that Paul [Garrigan, coach] and the lads are very good at – there’s never a lack of motivation, there’s never something that we can see fuel for, or can’t tap in to. Whether it’s a personal motivation or team motivation towards different teams or different kind of victories that we want as a team. We definitely won’t be short of any motivation for 2022.”
***
The Dunboyne dream is still ongoing, but the same applied there.
Returning to club duty just a week after the All-Ireland final, the side — led by Wall, Duggan, and a handful of other Meath players — stormed to county and provincial glory, ending Dublin side Foxrock-Cabinteely’s drive for seven-in-a-row in the Leinster final.
“That momentum came back in,” Wall smiles. “When you’re coming back into a team after winning an All-Ireland senior championship, there was such a buzz, so it was just like, ‘Let’s keep that going,’ and almost the club wanting to be a part of that.
“From the get-go, a lot of people were saying, ‘It’s Dunboyne’s to lose this year,’ in the county and stuff like that, but we were so conscious of not letting any of that trickle in. We were literally trying to compare it — I suppose to Dublin in saying, ‘We haven’t won it until we’ve won it.’ I think that was something that we were really conscious of. Even the Leinster campaign, we literally just took it one match at a time, it’s all you can do.”
The last few weeks have been quite the whirlwind, between the club campaign and the various end-of-year award ceremonies.
Vikki Wall of Meath with her TG4 Senior Players Player of the Year and TG4 Allstar awards during the TG4 Ladies Football All Stars Awards banquet, in association with Lidl, at the Bonnington Hotel last night!
— sportsfile (@sportsfile) November 14, 2021
📸 @sportsfilebren https://t.co/GTON4IfuXd pic.twitter.com/fc8DR02Unx
Named TG4 Senior Player of the Year on the night of her first All-Star in November, Wall followed it up with a nominee for RTÉ Sportsperson of the Year, as Meath found themselves in the running for Team of the Year, earning more deserved national recognition.
“Even just going in with Eamonn and Emma on Saturday, that makes things a lot more special,” she smiles. “I know it was a personal kind of accolade, but to be going in with them makes it a lot more special and makes it worthwhile as well, to get to do those things with the people that you’re training with.
“It’s nice to be recognised individually but it’s extra nice to get to experience it with team-mates as well.”
Wall’s modesty shines through time and time again, but you can also tell just how proud she is. And undoubtedly likewise, her family, who she planned to spend Christmas with.
Her sister, Sarah, who is also on the Meath panel, is nearing the end of a long road back from an ACL tear in last December’s intermediate final; doing well, and relishing a return to action in 2022.
Truth be told, they all are, but will take a few days to put the feet up and let the hair down over the festivities. They’ve been at that already, Wall laughs.
“We’ve got the balance anyway from 5 September, I don’t know how much balance though! We’re jetting off now on 30 December for a few nice days, so we’ll enjoy that and then we’ll be back to the serious stuff.”
The destination for the team holiday is Tenerife — “very tropic, very tropic,” she grins — before being brought right back to a reality on the return; preparations in full flow for the All-Ireland club semi-final… against, who else, but Cork’s Mourneabbey?
The reigning champions and a genuine powerhouse of ladies football.
“No messing around,” is Wall’s response. Plain and simple.
She’s done it before, nothing says she can’t do it again.
What a start to 2022 that would be.
