In attendance during the captains day ahead of the 2024 TG4 All-Ireland Ladies Football Championship Finals at Croke Park in Dublin was Kerry captain Niamh Carmody. Photo by Ben McShane/Sportsfile.
By John Harrington
Clearly this Kerry Ladies football team is made of stern stuff.
Losing two All-Ireland Finals in a row would break a lot of sides, yet here they are again coming back for more in this year's Final against Galway on Sunday, hoping to make it third time lucky.
They’ve shown a real mental toughness this season to fight their way through to this stage again.
Sports psychologist Claire Thornton joined the management team this year, and Kerry team captain Niamh Carmody believes she’s played a big part in helping them regroup for another assault on the Brendan Martin Cup.
"She’s been fantastic for us this year,” says Carmody. “Everything she’s done with us, we’ve been able to implement in games. She’s been a phenomenal addition to the group.
“A lot of players have worked well with her over the year. All I’ve been hearing is good words about her. She’s just a fantastic addition, to be honest.
“Some of the work shops she has done with us have been phenomenal. It’s shown in some of the tight games we’ve come through and the confidence that every player is playing with.
“I suppose I never used any of the sport psychology tools (before). You’d have a lot of different tools; visualisation, writing down things before training you want to work on, keeping it fresh in your head.
“There are lots of tools that she has brought to the panel that have stood to me fairly well over the year.”
Niamh Carmody of Kerry has her kick blocked down by Grace Ferguson of Armagh during the TG4 All-Ireland Ladies Football Senior Championship semi-final match between Armagh and Kerry at Glenisk O’Connor Park in Tullamore, Offaly. Photo by Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile.
Losing a second All-Ireland Final in a row last year was devastating at the time, but Carmody was certain she wanted to commit to the cause again in 2024.
“I suppose when you leave the team in September after losing an All-Ireland final, you’re always thinking in your head, ‘will I do a bit of travelling?’ or ‘what will I do?’
“But to be honest, I think the majority of the girls on the panel here, we have the belief in each other that we can go all the way. That’s probably what has kept us together the last couple of years.
“That and the fact that we’re all so mad for football down there as well. We love going to training. There is great camaraderie in the team. That’s probably what has stuck us together as well.”
“I think we all just kind of had our mind made up we wanted to go again. Obviously we lost a couple of girls to retirement or just stepping away from the panel.
“But he majority of the girls are back, There’s a couple of younger ones gone travelling but I think for the most part, people had it in their minds that we were going to give it another shot.”
Losing a third final in a row would extremely tough to take for this group and there’s added pressure too because they’re most people’s favourites to beat Galway on Sunday, but Carmody is confident they can handle it.
“We’ve put a good bit of pressure on ourselves,” she says. “From the start of the year, this is where we wanted to be. I think we have belief within ourselves that we can get over the line.
“I suppose after the hurt of the last couple of years, it would be twice as nice. Look, it would just be a massive achievement for this group of players because we’ve stuck together over the last couple of years.”
