Galvin from Finuge, eyeing a Cork scalp

No, she’s not related to him. She might be a Galvin, from Finuge, that plays football for Kerry with an astonishing intensity rampaging between the half-back and half-forward lines, so she can understand why you would assume that connection but, as it happens, they’re don’t really know each other.

In Finuge, she explains, nearly every second person is a Galvin. There’s Paul and his clan. There’s the relatives of John Galvin, the Limerick footballer, whose father hails from the village. Then there’s her crowd. She has a brother who won an All-Ireland with the senior men’s team all right, but that was back in 2000 when Enda was a sub, coming on during the epic semi-final saga against Armagh. He’s not related to Paul either.

And in Finuge nearly everyone is into football. Other sports might grab their interest, like Paul started out as a hurler and Louise remains one of the country’s leading female basketballers, but when you hail from the same village as Jimmy Deenihan, football will always assume a certain primacy. She was reared on the Kerry Golden Years. “Instead of watching cartoons,” she smiles, “I’d slip on that video instead.”