Eimear Ryan: Meath’s disruptive rise will give hope to breakthrough counties
Meath’s Emma Troy embraces Sean Boylan, former boss of the county’s senior men’s team, after the TG4 All-Ireland Ladies SFC final at Croke Park. The corner-back was emblematic of their fitness and ethos of support on the way to glory. Picture: Eóin Noonan/Sportsfile
You could say this was an overnight success. Meath won the intermediate ladies football championship only last December, after all, and already they’ve ascended to senior All-Ireland champions. And they all seem so young, even if 19-year-old Emma Duggan and 23-year-old Vikki Wall have the composure of seasoned campaigners. Never mind that it was their third intermediate final in a row, that they’d had to drop down from senior to rebuild: This was a meteoric rise.
You could say it was a tactical masterplan — that merciless pressure on the Dublin kickouts; the tigerish defending based not on crowding and slapping but brilliant timing and interceptions. The way they found space on the counter-attack. The confidence of the kick-passing and shooting.
You could say they reminded you of the Meath footballers of the ’80s and ’90s, the Colm O’Rourke era — partly because of that grid pattern on the jersey, but not because of that.
You could say this played out like a fairytale, but you’d also have to acknowledge they did it the hard way, beating the two prevailing powers of the game: Cork and Dublin. The Brendan Martin Cup has been held by one or other of these counties since 2005, usually for long stretches at a time. This year, Dublin were going for five in a row; before that, Cork had held onto it for six years.
You could say that their defeat of Cork, poaching two late goals to force the game to extra time, and then edging victory by a point, was typical of an up-and-coming team catching an established side off-guard. But their defeat of Dublin was anything but. They led from the fifth minute, almost daring the then-champions to catch them.
“Tá an cnoc ar buile,” said commentator Brian Tyers at one point when Dublin weren’t awarded a free, making me think of my colleague Michael Moynihan’s recent excellent piece about the delights of sports commentary as Gaeilge. My B-student Irish doesn’t allow me to detect all the nuance, but the odd gas phrase filters through. (Have I had ‘An Poc Ar Buile’ stuck in my head ever since? Yes, yes I have. Ailliliú …)
The cnoc is understandably ar buile of late. Doubles and back-to-backs have become the norm; this year, their supremacy in both men’s and women’s football has been interrupted. In both codes, Dublin’s game has been analysed and studied to death: Meath stormed Croke Park with the freshness of the new.
Crucially, any inroads that Dublin made over the course of the game they made through their own excellence and determination — not any Meath errors or inexperience. Hannah Tyrrell, in particular, was outstanding, kicking four points from play. Had her powerful shot on goal in the 20th minute not been squarely saved by Monica McGuirk, Tyrrell may have been the Dubs’ hero. Due to her professional rugby career, she missed out on the glory days, but you’d hope to see her back in a sky-blue jersey next year.
As you’d hope to see many of the household names back. Aherne, Goldrick, Davey, McEvoy, Rowe — all are icons who are probably each personally responsible for recruiting hundreds of young girls to ladies football. Mick Bohan seemed to acknowledge that not all these players will return in his post-match concession speech, though many of them may feel they have more to give. I’m sure it lifted Dub hearts to see their players classily congratulating the Meath victors after the game; the Dublin girls, perhaps more than anyone, know what it’s like to break through after years of struggle.
It was one of the most thrilling and dramatic games I’ve watched in any code this year, and I say this as decidedly Not a Football Person. Gratifying, too, to hear that over 300,000 viewers tuned into TG4 for the senior game. Anecdotally I’ve spoken to GAA fans who deliberately didn’t watch the game, not wanting to see Meath destroyed and thinking the result would be a foregone conclusion. As soon as they started getting score alerts on their phones, however, they turned on the telly.
I’ve grown increasingly fond of the siren in ladies football: The countdown, the crowd’s anticipation, the elaborate games of keep-ball that players engage in with one eye on the clock. Like an action movie that keeps cutting back to a bomb’s digital timer to ratchet up the tension, the siren is a narrative device that lends the final minutes of any game an extra weight and tension.
Vikki Wall’s gut-bursting run up the right wing in the dying moments, absolutely refusing to be denied, was typical of Meath’s ferocity and determination all day. Niamh O’Sullivan’s third point, six minutes from the end — almost from the endline, the type of shot you’d be yelling at a player not to take — summed up their confidence and daring. Corner-back Emma Troy came up the field twice to provide an option for her teammates and finished the game with two points from play, typifying their fitness and ethos of support.
Meath have all the building blocks to be a new dominant force in ladies football, but their splendidly disruptive rise will give hope to other breakthrough counties and do wonders for the sport as a whole. Tipp, for example, have been there or thereabouts for a number of years, winning intermediate titles in 2017 and 2019, but have yet to establish a firm foothold in senior football. They have the players; Meath have just demonstrated how it can be done.
You could say, as their low-key yet clearly inspirational manager Eamonn Murray did, that these Meath players are now heroes for life; that they need never kick another ball and still ensure their place in history. This is true, and yet winning always begets more winning; having experienced it, this group of players will want more.
You could say they were lucky, but then, all champions are; no team ever won an All-Ireland without a dose of good fortune. And how lucky were we, that we got to watch it unfold.
I’ve grown increasingly fond of the siren in ladies football: The countdown, the crowd’s anticipation, the elaborate games of keep-ball that players engage in with one eye on the clock
