Dubs looking to make it third time lucky

Mark Gallagher

He was launching the TG4 Ladies’ Football championship, and having lost the last two All-Ireland finals, Dublin are eager to get back to Croker and All-Ireland final day and finding third time a charm.

“It is more than a goal at this stage, winning the All-Ireland. It is an obsession,” Dublin skipper Niamh McEvoy said. “It is something we really, really want and hopefully, if we put the work in, it will all come together later this year.”

Last year, Galway became the second successive Connacht county to beat Dublin in the final. The year before, they fell to a last-minute Mayo goal.

According to TG4 viewing figures, that final was watched by 207,000, an indication of how mainstream ladies football has become.

The Dublin team didn’t sit around and lick their wounds after the second straight disappointment. It has just sharpened their edge for the championship ahead.

“Despite losing, you just wanted to get back into it straight away,” McEvoy said. “If I had my way, we would have started training straight after the final last way. There are no ways to describe the disappointment we felt, especially last year. But it has just made us more determined.

“It was a crushing disappointment to come here two years in a row and lose. But there are positives that can be taken. We can use the experience of what we did and what we should have done. Hopefully, it will make us even stronger to challenge for the title this year.”

Although yesterday was the official launch of the championship, there have been plenty of games already this year, as the round-robin series kicked off in all the provinces a couple of weeks ago. Ladies Football President Geraldine Giles talked about how open the All-Ireland series is: “This year’s championship looks to be extremely competitive. Any one of ten teams are looking like potential winners at this stage. Even at junior level, there are several emerging teams aiming for senior status.”

Giles says that one of the biggest challenges facing Ladies Football is the management of its projected growth over the coming years. “The challenge now is to keep growing and cater for the huge interest all over the country. We estimate there could be 150,000 players by 2008, which would be phenomenal.”

The Taoiseach put the growth in different perspective, saying that more people attended last year’s All-Ireland final than attended the AIL Rugby Cup final or the FAI Cup final.

In September there will be another milestone for ladies football, when they will host their first ever International tournament which will bring together teams from North America, Australasia, Europe and the UK.