Lyndsey Davey
John Harrington
Dublin ladies footballer Lyndsey Davey is a can-do sort of person.
A firefighter with the Dublin Airport fire service, she was the only female recruited in a class of 16.
In that job you don’t have the time to doubt or second-guess yourself, you simply have to always give your best regardless of the circumstances.
That’s probably why Davey continues to lead from the front for the Dublin lady footballers despite some hard defeats in the recent past.
On Saturday they’ll play Mayo in the first ever Ladies National Football League match in Croke Park, and Davey will be focus on the job at hand like she always does.
You’d understand if the memories of last year’s All-Ireland Final defeat to Cork came flooding back because that was the last time she and her team-mates were in action at Croke Park.
But Davey doesn’t seeing the point in wallowing in regret over that defeat or the ones they also fell to against Cork in the 2015 and 2014 All-Ireland Finals.
“You have to be mentally strong,” she says. “If you feel sorry for yourself, you're not going to improve.
"You can sit there and moan about what happened and what went wrong in the game and what you could have fixed.
“But, at the end of the day, you have to get back at it and play even harder and hope that the hard work will prevail.”
Davey has been working hard at the coalface of Dublin ladies football for a long time now.
Lyndsey Davey
She’s still only 27, but, incredibly, first joined up with the senior county team when she was just 14. A year later, she won an All-Star.
“Yeah, I would been involved from the age of 14,” says Davey. “I was 15 when I made my championship debut in the quarter-final against Donegal.
“I think as the years have gone on it's gotten a little bit tougher alright. The recovery seems to take longer. Playing inter-county football at such a high level for so long, it does take a toll on your body.
“But, thankfully, I'm still really enjoying it. Mick Bohan is our manager this year and I think he's brought a new lease of life into the team.”
This his Bohan’s second term as Ladies senior manager having previously steered the ‘Jackies’ to the 2003 All-Ireland Final.
He returns to the role with a seriously impressive CV that includes a spell as skills coach with the 2013 All-Ireland winning Dublin team.
He’s also coached DCU to three Sigerson Cups, and last year coached the Clare footballers that reached the All-Ireland Quarter-Final against the odds.
“He's got new ideas and the training has been going really well and the girls are all really positive about it,” says Davey.
“He's the sort of coach who really tries to improve everyone. If he sees anyone weakness in you he'll try to turn it into a strength. He's very focused on the skills of the game and it's something I think should be brought in across the board.
“The last few years we've come up against a very experienced Cork side. To be in three All-Ireland Finals and come out on the wrong side of the result is very disheartening.
“But we know we're so close as well and that hunger and passion is definitely still there with the girls to drive it on again this year. And with Mick bringing in new ideas and giving the girls a new perspective, we’re not going to stop trying.”
**Lyndsay Davey spoke to GAA.ie at the announcement of a major partnership between the GAA and RNLI aimed at reducing the number of people who lose their lives though drowning in Ireland. It’s a cause close to Davey’s heart because her late Great Uncle Michael Hayes was skipper of the trawler Tit Bonhomme that sank off the west coast of Cork in 2012 with a loss of five lives. **
