By John Harrington

Mick Bohan never imagined he’d be managing a Dublin ladies football team that would contest this year’s LGFA Senior All-Ireland Final.

Initially that was because he didn’t still think he’d be in the role when they were beaten in the 2022 All-Ireland quarter-final by Donegal on a day when it really felt like an era had ended for Dublin ladies football.

Bohan doesn’t mind admitting that as he drove away from that game he was certain he was stepping down as team manager.

He’s not quite sure when he changed his mind about that, but the fact that he felt he and his management team let themselves down that day against Donegal was ultimately what persuaded them to give it another go.

And when he made the decision to return for the 2023 season he did so with very pragmatic goals.

The team would have to be rebuilt after the exodus of some long-serving stars, and so he felt 2023 would be a year of setting foundations in place rather than entertaining lofty plans of challenging hard for an All-Ireland title.

“This year, I would have said to ye at the start of the year that our whole modus operandi was to make this thing competitive again,” says Bohan.

“If you'd asked me last November or December were we going to be in this position, I'd have said no.

“It was just too much all in one go. So that in itself, being here, is an achievement. But I'm long enough around in knowing that the real achievement in getting to these days is making sure you perform.

Bohan’s initial assessment about his team's prospects seemed accurate when Dublin lost to Kerry by 11 points and Galway by nine points in the League.

But, perhaps, counter-intuitively, it was a defeat, when Kerry came to Parnell Park for the first round of the championship and came away with a hard-fought two-point victory, that persuaded him his new-look team might yet have a big say this summer.

“There was a point...I think probably the Kerry game at Parnell Park where we felt that if we could get a couple of things right then we could be a lot more competitive than we were,” says Bohan.

“That probably was the day...we went seven points down and showed huge character to come back into it.

“On another day, a couple of things could have gone our way that might have changed it.

“But yeah, that was the day where they actually felt that, you know, because we had got an absolute trimming in Tralee and Tuam.

“So we'd had some really tough times throughout the course of the year but that day we showed superb character.”

Bohan has found out that you can’t quite predict when young footballers will suddenly square their shoulders and realise that they belong at this level.

And when they do and begin to mine a rich seam of new-found confidence, they can quickly develop from inexperienced fringe players to those happy to take a central role.

And other players with years of experience but who perhaps previously deferred to team-mates who were regarded as the main leaders can also suddenly decide to shoulder a yoke of greater responsibility and lead from the front themselves.

“During the National League you're trying an awful lot of different things out, you're trying different personnel, you're trying to see when you're in trouble like we were in the Cork game, you know, we had started poorly but then we had turned it around, but then in the second-half the thing was running away from us. But you're seeing the people who want to battle, the people who want to go to war in those moments.

“Girls like Niamh Crowley, I'm thinking of some of the younger kids, she's come straight out of minor last year and she's probably at a stage where she's been one of the best corner-backs we've had in any of the seven years.

“Niamh Donlon only found her wings after a challenge game against Mayo five or six weeks ago and she's been superb. We've been terribly lucky over the years that we've had some fantastic leaders but that secondary group, the Carlas (Rowe), and Leahs (Caffrey) and Jen Dunnes, they were never put in this position before and there was no other way out, they'd have to either face it down and become leaders and take this thing by the scruff of the neck or fall.

“And there's no guarantees what's going to happen when they're put in that position but they've been tremendous in standing up to the ownership of that.”

Another factor that has certainly helped Dublin exceed Bohan’s early-season expectations was his success in persuading four-in-a-row captain, Sinéad Aherne, to return to the panel for a 20th season.

“Yeah, Sinéad Aherne was the big one, to try and bring her back in,” he says. “She's just been an unbelievable presence around the group for as long as I've been here. What I saw early doors was that so much change had taken place.

“In fairness, the coaches were doing a magnificent job but there's nothing like it coming from within the group, of passing on the lessons learnt.

“We were trying to get her back just to help us to coach the younger kids, which she has been fantastic in doing.

“But, as we knew, she has such a fantastic football brain. She has obviously now put herself in a position where she's one of the crew who will take part on Sunday.”

You sense that Bohan is relishing the challenge of playing this Kerry team in Sunday’s All-Ireland Final.

They’ve lost to them twice already this year, but Dublin are on an upward curve and with so many proven All-Ireland winners in their ranks will find self-belief easy to source.

“From the start of the year I would have said Kerry are the best team in the competition,” says Bohan. “If we weren’t up against them, I’d be wishing them well.

“But we’re up against them, so that changes everything. I like the way they play, they play the game on the front foot, they are extremely well conditioned, they compete for absolutely everything, so I see this being a really good contest.

“We know we are up against a team who were probably a little bit ahead of us from the point of view of where they are at with their squad, they are on their fifth year of development while we have a combined group, some of the older girls who are here for their seventh campaign or around that and obviously some of the new guns in for their first one.

“They are the challenges you want in sport. If you are going out assuming this is a done deal or whatever else, there is no challenge in it."