How Dingle moved killer mistakes into the plus column

Who better to characterise the essential ingredients that frame this remarkable journey from West Kerry to Croke Park that Liam O'Connor?

DINGLE ALL THE WAY: Dingle celebrate after the AIB GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Club Championship semi-final. Pic: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile.

There are the lighthouses for sure, on the field and in the backroom team, for All-Ireland Club SFC finalists Dingle. Exhibit A is selector Liam O’Connor, a brother of that warrior Vincent ‘Shin’.

Who better to characterise the essential ingredients that frame this remarkable journey from West Kerry to Croke Park?

Headline-grabbing feats from Paul Geaney and his cousins, Mark O’Connor and Tom O’Sullivan, are one thing, but let’s hear it for the likes of Billy O’Connor, Mathew O’Flaherty, and Tadgh De Brun, too, says O’Connor.

Liam says: “Every team has prominent names that trip off the lips of everybody, but it’s a 15-man game and you need competency in every position of the field, and you need people coming off the bench, then, who are going to push that on a bit at the decisive times of games.“

“We’re delighted with the way the squad has developed over the last few years and has gained more big-game experience, and what’s important in that is big-game disappointments, because they can strengthen you and drive you on to go again,” he says.

Evidently, the disappointments of losing a Munster final to Castlehaven in 2023, and a county final to Dr Crokes a year later, have strengthened the resolve and togetherness within the group.

"They’re a good kicking team, great individual skills, great marking abilities, very crisp in the tackle.”

“If you look at any team’s success, they will be able to point to occasions when things didn’t go their way and they fell short, marginally so, and you can say we should have beaten Castlehaven, but the fact is we didn’t, and they hung in there, and we had the game won twice, but fair play to them.

“They stuck with it, and maybe we took a bit from that, against the Barrs and against Boden, the way Castlehaven were able to stick in there, and they didn’t panic, and they got back in to that Munster final that time, not with two-pointers or with goals, but by good, calm play in terrible conditions, So maybe, deep down, we took a lesson.

“But from that game, you do get the feeling that you’re not too far off it, and let’s change a couple of things, and let’s try and just push a bit harder, and we thought we had done that in 2024, but we fell short twice, and we made mistakes in both of those games.

“Each time we made mistakes, they impacted on us for the rest of the game, and maybe the difference between 2024 and 2025 is that we still make plenty of mistakes in 2025, but for some reason we didn’t allow them to impact on our performance for the rest of the game.

“Like against West Kerry in the championship, that was a really tough game, West Kerry were missing three or four top players that day, and had they been on board, who knows what would have happened? We were six points down to Mid-Kerry; somehow, we got back in front and held on for dear life in the last five minutes. We made mistakes, certainly, but we didn’t allow them to impact on us like we had done in previous years.”

So what informed their dramatic All-Ireland semi-final comeback at Páirc Uí Chaoimh against the Leinster champions, Ballyboden St Enda’s?

“When you’re nine points down in a game, and then you go 10 points down in a game, maybe the worst thing that happened to Ballyboden was them getting that goal. I’m sure they went in at half time, and the manager said, ‘It’s 0-0, Dingle will come at you’. We got the three points, we thought, ‘We’re on the move here’. The next thing, a goal and a point by Boden, and we’re 10 points down. And maybe the Boden players, deep down, said, ‘We have these’.

“Like the 800m runner who’s coasting to victory, and he looks over the shoulder and there’s no sign of anybody, and the next thing, somebody passes him on the inside, and he just can’t readjust,” says O’Connor.

Of Sunday’s final opponents, St Bridget’s, O’Connor muses: “They’re a good kicking team, great individual skills, great marking abilities, very crisp in the tackle.”