Lorraine Scanlon aiming to follow mother’s path to Kerry gold

IN THE FAMILY: Kerry's Lorraine Scanlon is looking to follow in her mother Mary's footsteps. Pic: INPHO/Bryan Keane

When Lorraine Scanlon was selected at midfield on the 2017 All-Star ladies football team, hers wasn’t the first All-Star to be carried across the front door of the Scanlon household. That honour had fallen to her mother, Mary, exactly 30 years earlier.

“It was nice to level her on that one,” Lorraine quipped this week of matching her mother’s 1987 All-Star win.

But as for matching her mother’s haul of five All-Ireland medals, Scanlon knows there’ll be no catching Mary on the Celtic crosses count. On that front, the 29-year-old would be beyond content to have just one of her own to go alongside mam’s five.

“Like the Saw Doctors sing, to win just once. That’s all, just one. We’ll go for one,” says the long-serving Kerry midfielder.

Comparisons between mother and daughter weren’t long surfacing when Lorraine burst onto the senior inter-county scene as a 16-year-old in 2009. It was a year where the youngster kicked 3-2 and 1-6 respectively as St Joseph’s Abbeyfeale took home the All-Ireland post-primary Junior and Senior C titles.

She didn’t lick it off the ground, as they say.

Mary Lane won her five All-Ireland medals during Kerry’s nine-in-a-row dominance of the game between 1982 and ‘90. The half-back was captain for the ‘88 win, while a year earlier, she made history as the first and only player to convert a ‘45 in an All-Ireland ladies football final.

But walk into the Scanlon home today and you’d not know the woman of the house was an All-Ireland winning captain, five-time All-Ireland winner, and All-Star recipient.

“Does the back of a cupboard in a piece of tissue count as on display,” replies Lorraine, laughing, when asked if the five medals are on view in the house.

“And I don’t think there is any picture on the wall, only the wedding photo. She’s as laid back as they come.

“There’s a video around the place of the ‘87 All-Ireland. I remember I watched it years ago, but the cassette player has long been thrown out. We’d have to try and convert it to DVD to watch it now. It hasn’t been pulled out for a while. I’d say there is cobwebs on it.

“Mom would never have pressurised me into playing. I would have known dad trained the club team in Knocknagoshel before I ever thought mom played football.” 

Not that Scanlon had much interest in kicking a ball during her childhood.

“I was more interested in barbie dolls than footballs. It wasn’t until 10 or 11 that I got interested in the football and maybe then I started asking questions. Ask and you shall receive, isn’t that what they say.” 

Having made her senior debut in ‘09, Scanlon is a long time on the road in green and gold. When lining out at full-forward against Éamonn Ryan’s Cork in the 2012 final, she was still a teenager.

That Kerry team weren’t the first, nor the last, to be overrun by the red juggernaut, but neither did they think it would take another 10 years to return to the concluding day of action.

Semi-finals were reached in 2013, ‘15, and ‘17. Their decade away, though, was characterised more by off-field strife and constant managerial changes, both year-to-year and mid-season, as was the case in 2018.

“It makes us appreciate what we have at the moment. It makes us realise that you do need to have a structure in place for a while. We needed that time to build with the current management team and the lads have done great work the last three years,” says the PE teacher.

“Before that, we had a change in management for two or three years, it was changing every year, and there was no bit of routine or structure about it. That was having an effect on our style of play as we were always changing our style of play. There was no familiarity within the structure or anything like that.

“Darragh (Long) and Declan (Quill) have done massive work since they have come in. They have built something special within the team. That’s definitely got us to where we are. We appreciate everything now, maybe in comparison to a couple of years ago. And sure at the time, we dealt with the changes in management as they came. You just had to deal with it and get on with it.

“But what we have now, between the girls and the system the management have put in place, is special to be fair. It is something that is great to be involved in.” 

Now, to do as the Saw Doctors sang and win just once.