Meath ladies football team captain, Shauna Ennis.
By Paul Keane
Just seven months after captaining Meath to their first All-Ireland ladies football title, Shauna Ennis is on the verge of hoisting the Lidl National League Division 1 trophy too.
These are historic days she will cherish forever and achievements she doesn't take lightly having played through what she diplomatically terms 'difficult times' early in her Royal County career.
Across 2015 and 2016, heavy beatings became the norm for Meath and while the Na Fianna defender was studying hard to become a schoolteacher in 2017, there's no doubt the torrid run of results influenced her decision to step away from county activity that year.
"It wasn't enjoyable, it wasn't an enjoyable time to be playing for Meath ladies," said Ennis. "It wasn't that we didn't have the talent, we had really talented girls in Meath. It was just about the setup I think and a few things going wrong for us. Thankfully all that has turned around now."
While Ennis was away in 2017, Meath appointed Eamonn Murray as manager and their stock has been on the rise since.
They've lost and then won All-Ireland intermediate finals, pushed on for that remarkable senior win last September and built on promotion from Division 2 of the Lidl National League by reaching Sunday's Division 1 decider.
The consistency that Ennis craved in her early years with Meath when she played under a series of different managers is now in place.
"For my first couple of years we had Lar Wall in charge, he was an excellent manager," said Ennis. "We had him for 2013 and 2014. Then there were a couple of years where people were in and out and it was very unsettled.
"Then since the lads have come in in 2017, we've just built up such a good relationship with them and we're really, really close as a group.
"Eamonn is our manager and Paul Garrigan is our head coach. Eamonn was responsible really for bringing the team together. He made all the phone calls in 2017 to get girls like myself back in.
"He brought in Paul, our head coach. He brought in Paddy Dowling and Shane Wall and Michelle Grimes and all of these fantastic people. Now we have such a huge backroom team and we're just all driving towards the same goal which is great."
Donegal captain Niamh McLaughlin and Meath captain Shauna Ennis pictured at Croke Park ahead of next Sunday’s Lidl National League Divisions 1 and 2 Finals at the venue. Armagh will play Kerry in the Division 2 Final at 2pm, followed by the Division 1 Final between Donegal and Meath at 4pm. Both games will be televised live on TG4 and ticket information is available by visiting https://bit.ly/3Ni0LRN #SeriousSupport
Just like winning intermediate and senior All-Ireland championships in consecutive seasons, Meath are close now to Division 2 and Division 1 title wins in successive years. Ennis is loving the upward trajectory and rapid progress and is keen to disprove those who believe their 2021 success was a one off.
"I think it was really important after last year that we did back up our win with good performances in the league," she said. "We were very conscious to make sure that we didn't want people to say that we were a one-hit wonder."
Still, she doesn't believe they necessarily have to beat Donegal in Sunday's final to validate their 2021 Championship win in any way.
"Look, I think the match on Sunday is just going to be a really, really tough match," she said. "Donegal are pretty much a seasoned Division 1 team. This is our first year in Division 1 regardless of our win last year in the Championship, it's still our first year in Division 1 and Donegal have beaten Dublin as well in the semi-final so it's going to be a really, really tough, physical match.
"We're just really going to focus on going out and putting in a big performance because I don't think we've had a complete 60-minute whole team performance in the league so far yet."
