Kerry great Louise Ní Mhuircheartaigh fears for ladies football standards due to player exodus
EXODUS: In December, as AFLW clubs signed several ladies footballers, Louise Ní Mhuircheartaigh wondered who was going to be left in the game. Pic: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile
Kerry great Louise Ní Mhuircheartaigh reckons 'something has to be done' about the increasing drain of top talent from the ladies game to Australia.
Speaking ahead of Thursday evening's airing of her episode on TG4, the 2023 Player of the Year said joining the AFLW was never something that interested her.
But it clearly excites many others in the county game with well over 40 current or former inter-county players signed up to AFLW teams for 2026.
Meath are the latest county to feel the pinch with four starters - Mary Kate Lynch, Vikki Wall, Sarah Wall and Aoibhín Cleary - from last year's All-Ireland final team committed to Australian sides. Former Meath player Orlagh Lally is also playing the oval ball game.
Lynch, a current All-Star defender, is the latest Meath player to leave and will join Ní Mhuircheartaigh's former Kerry colleagues Julie O'Sullivan and Paris McCarthy at the Sydney Swans.
"I think something has to be done," said Ní Mhuircheartaigh. "I don't know what week it was, maybe it was before Christmas, but there were five, six, seven players from the ladies game here announced to be going over to Australia. It was all the established players and it was just getting to the stage where you're saying, 'Hold on a minute, who's going to be left at all here?'
"And then we were looking at our own Kerry team and thinking, 'Jeez, is there someone going to be heading from them as well?' Thankfully they haven't actually gotten to Kerry ladies too much, so we're not losing anyone again this year. But yeah, I feel something has to be done."
Ní Mhuircheartaigh described it as 'frightening times' for the LGFA and said her big fear is around the quality of the game potentially plummeting.
"I'd fear for maybe the standard of ladies football dropping because of these high-profile players leaving," she said. "I hope that doesn't happen and those girls that are going shouldn't feel that pressure of maybe letting their counties down, or their clubs down or whatever, but that is probably the (general) fear, yeah, that the standard might drop. I felt ladies football was progressing really well."
Ní Mhuircheartaigh ended a 17-year Kerry career at the end of 2024. It's only recently that she has returned to even kicking a ball locally.
"I'm going back to the club this year," she said. "I took a step back last year for different reasons. I know the girls had their first session on Sunday. I had a Hyrox on Saturday so I wasn't able to go. I'm planning to go back on the pitch now this weekend and be with the girls. Matches start on the 22nd of March. How it'll go I have no idea, I haven't kicked a ball properly in about a year and a half."
Schoolteacher Ní Mhuircheartaigh has been an interested spectator for Kerry's National League games. The Kingdom sit in the mid table after losing three home games and winning two away matches.
"They have three weeks now before the away game in Armagh, which they have to win," she said. "I hope the girls know how important that game is because if you lose that game, you're going away to a tough Kildare team team and we all know how important it is to stay up in Division 1."
On the new rules which have come in just too late for her to experience, Ní Mhuircheartaigh is a fan.
"From the first few games, you noticed straight away what teams were practising the solo and go especially," she said. "With Kerry, especially in the Dublin game, they (Kerry players) were gone before Dublin even realised that the solo and go was even allowed. It just kind of felt like that and I suppose it'll take a few more games to get used to it.
"But I think come the Championship, everyone should be up to speed. But you can definitely catch a team out very rapidly with the solo and go if they're not tuned in. So I think that mental sharpness, being tuned in, will have to be upped as well."
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