Kerry, Galway and the LGFA can't afford to waste their Sunday in the spotlight
The Brendan Martin Cup and the jerseys that Galway and Kerry will wear. Pic: David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile
Not everyone was appreciative of Mayo’s collapsed house of pain. Not everyone was thankful for the timing of their collapsed famine.
This is ladies football weekend. This is their one week of 52 in the Gaelic games calendar where they occupy the stage positions of front and centre.
But of course they haven’t been front and centre in recent days.
It isn’t that coverage of the Galway-Kerry decider has been any less sizable than recent showpieces, it is more how coverage has been shoved to the periphery of sports pages and down the pecking order of online placement.
Impossible to compete in print with Keith Higgins’ exclusive diary, Jordan Flynn’s tale of red-card shame, or the what’s-next musings of his 18-year-old brother.
Impossible to compete on social media with young Ollie Moran belting out the week’s 765th rendition of Mayo’s Saw Doctors anthem from atop an open lorry in Ballaghaderreen or the viral take-off of final-minute hit-the-nuclear-button commentary.
Ladies football will have Sunday. It will have its uninterrupted afternoon. But that’s all it will have. Everything else this week is green, red, soft, and craggy.
Such are the perils of following seven days after the conclusion of the men’s inter-county season.
Indeed, this reality may also bear out at the turnstiles, what with Kerry coming back up the road for the second weekend running.
When Galway and Kerry met on the concluding day in 2024, the attendance of 30,340 was the smallest for a ladies football decider in 10 years.
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This disappointing crowd prompted then Ladies Football CEO Helen O’Rourke to describe the association’s own membership as among “the worst supporters” of ladies football. She also called for “serious consideration” to be given to returning the finals to September.
“The condensed season, which sees all codes active on the same weekends over a short period, will always mean that families must make a financial choice on who they support, and unfortunately female sports will never win this battle,” she so correctly pointed out in her 2024 annual report.
Another challenging battleground the LGFA finds itself mired in will also play out this weekend.
At 7.15am Irish time on Saturday morning, the North Sydney Oval stages the inaugural AFLW showdown between Aussie and Irish selections.
What began as a novel pursuit by Cora Staunton at the end of 2017 has become a relentless talent drain on the ladies' game here at home.
And where once it was tolerated for players to juggle county commitments and contractual obligations, less and less is that the case.
There is a record 46 Irish players on AFLW lists for the upcoming season. Included in that is four starters from the 2025 Dublin-Meath All-Ireland final.
Kayleigh Cronin was nominated for player of the year such was her immense full-back contribution in Kerry’s famine-ending run two years ago.
Her priority this weekend is Adelaide’s Ebony Marinoff and North Melbourne’s Jasmine Garner, not the Corofin pair of Róisín Leonard and Leanne Coen.
Áine McDonagh, the once Galway teammate of Leonard and Coen, is this weekend the Irish teammate of Cronin. Emma Dineen is another green and gold starter from 2024 now holding a Sherrin.
No one should begrudge any player for wanting to cash in on their talent. Before add-ons, the minimum annual salary on offer in Australia is €41,000. The amateur alternative is the endless fight for equality and equity.
On the back page of this week’s was Galway LGFA chairperson John Devlin revealing that senior boss Daniel Moynihan had to ring around for a training venue the week before their All-Ireland final.
Integration, please hurry up.
“They could be in Dangan. They could be in Loughgeorge. They could be in Ballinasloe, or in Tuam. We could be looking all the time. We don’t have that piece of land,” said Devlin.
If none of that is at all cheery, the new rules have been a welcome bright spot in 2026.
Where for too long they were methodical and handpass-oriented, Galway have dropped the lever this summer.
The Kilkerrin-Clonberne blueprint - attack, attack direct, and attack more by hand than foot - has been belatedly adopted. With their seven starters concentrated in the middle third, adoption onto the inter-county stage has been seamless.
“The new rules, as a group, have definitely suited us. It means there are a few more one-on-one attacking options,” said Olivia Divilly, one of the aforementioned Kilkerrin-Clonberne seven.
Her 2-24 is part of the 8-82 they’ve piled on across their four-game All-Ireland campaign. In every single outing they have hit the 20-point marker. Their talent is without question. It’s their mettle that requires proving.
In management and playing personnel, Kerry are much changed from the experienced crew that crushed Galway to bridge a 31-year gap two summers ago.
Six of the team that started the recent semi-final trouncing of Dublin had no involvement in the 2024 decider.
Trouncing has been the theme of the knockout stages. The semi-final winning margins were 10 and 13 points respectively.
Their quarter-final winning margins were 12 and 17 points respectively. Bar the Cork-Dublin chaos at Parnell Park, the quarters and semis were deeply underwhelming.
“I think it is going to be a really enjoyable afternoon of football, and we need it because the standard of the championship has not been good,” said All-Ireland winning Dublin manager Mick Bohan on the LGFA’s podcast this week.
“Ultimately, and we all know this, there is only one real game that becomes our showpiece, this is it, and that is what people around the country talk about for the next eight or nine months when it comes to women’s football. I really do expect a high-scoring encounter and I really do expect both teams to go for it, so that should lead to an entertaining afternoon.”
Sunday is their afternoon. No one else’s. They can’t waste it. They can’t afford to waste it.
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