Kerry joint manager Declan Quill paid tribute to the character of their squad as they secured their first TG4 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship title since 1993 after being beaten in the final for the past two seasons.
Goals from Aoife Dillane, Hannah O’Donoghue and Emma Dineen were decisive at Croke Park, while Louise Ní Mhuircheartaigh struck 0-6 on a day when the Kingdom collected the Brendan Martin Cup for the 12th time in their history, moving them ahead of provincial rivals Cork at the top of the roll of honour.
“It’s unbelievable. I was here last year. There’s a massive difference in sport between winning and losing,” said Quill. “We were involved in a situation last year, not happy with our performance. Just got totally overrun by Dublin.
“The emotion now, to see all the parents, the girls celebrating. Our own kids outside on the field. Look, winning is everything as they say in sport at this level really.”
Quill said that he and joint manager Darragh Long were privileged to manage a squad that put in an enormous effort to come back and lift the TG4 All-Ireland crown after finishing runners-up for the past two years.
“It’s a team game. If you look at Hannah O’Donoghue, Lorraine Scanlon. They had to swallow not starting, but then they knew they had a job to do when they came on. They weren’t happy not starting obviously and you can use that in two different ways. You can see the girls when they came on how they used it and they put in two phenomenal performances, the two of them when they came on.
“It’s a team game, it’s a panel game. We’ve 35 girls there training non-stop. Only 20 can play and the hardest thing about management is picking a team. Leaving girls out is really, really hard. We’re very, very happy and we saved the best performance for the last day,” added Quill.
Kerry got on top in the opening half and five points without reply from Ní Mhuircheartaigh, including two excellent contributions from play, put the Munster champions firmly in the driving seat.
Galway finally responded with Roisin Leonard’s second point of the game, only for marauding defender Dillane to fire a looping shot beyond the reach of goalkeeper Dearbhla Gower to push Kerry 1-8 to 0-3 in front at the break.
Olivia Divilly pointed for Galway after the restart but Mary O’Connell soon joined her midfield partner Anna Galvin on the Kingdom scoresheet.
Teenage star Niamh Divilly supplemented the earlier effort from her sister Olivia with a fine point, but Kerry remained in the driving seat when Dineen and Ní Mhuircheartaigh both raised white flags in quick succession.
Olivia Divilly did knock over a close-range free at the opposite end, but the final outcome was effectively placed beyond when, just moments after her introduction as a substitute, O’Donoghue clinically dispatched the ball to the Galway net via a Ní Mhuircheartaigh pass.
Now rampant, Kerry added a third goal through Dineen inside a final quarter that also saw O’Donoghue (two) and the evergreen Lorraine Scanlon kicking points.
Galway did find the target through Andrea Trill, Charlotte Cooney, Leonard, Olivia Divilly and Shauna Hynes during this juncture, but Daniel Moynihan’s westerners came up short in their quest for a first All-Ireland senior crown in 20 years.
“It’s disappointing. I don’t we probably played to the level we needed to beat a fantastic Kerry team,” said Moynihan. “We knew we needed to hit form. All 15 players needed to play at their best and unfortunately we didn’t.
“Leading up to the game, training wise, everything was good. Players were switched to what was required of them. It’s just one of those things. I can’t put my finger on it right now, but preparation wise we were in a good place. Game wise, we started quite well. Especially that first 15 minutes, I think we controlled a lot of the game, even though Kerry had those few scores. We weren’t converting and that was the issue,” added Moynihan.
Kerry returned home to a joyous celebration across the county on Monday evening as can be seen from the picture above.
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