The questions are familiar, just a year older. The wait is similar, just a year longer.
It is 30 years now since Kerry last won a women’s All-Ireland senior football final but having lost to Meath in 2022, the Kingdom are back in the decider this Sunday where Dublin stand in their way of ending the drought.
“We answered these questions last year as well about 29 years,” says joint Kerry manager Darragh Long on the county’s wait for a first title since 1993.
“We didn’t bring it home last year. Not often in life do you get second chances. We had Kieran Donaghy in with us a couple of months ago and he spoke to the girls about all you can ever want in a sporting group is a chance to be in the final, a chance to be at the big dance and we’ve fed off those words for the last couple of months.
“We’ve got that chance now but that’s all we’ve got. There’s plenty of talk about it at home, with regards the 30 years, we see it and we hear it, but we don’t speak about it within the group.
“Hopefully we can end that famine on Sunday, but who knows, we might be sitting here in front of you in 12 months talking about it being 31 years. Hopefully that’s not the case.”
Long and Declan Quill have done an exceptional job in steering Kerry back towards the summit of the women’s game.
They were both at the men’s All-Ireland final two weeks ago when Dublin beat Kerry at Croke Park, so the county’s last chance of landing a senior title this year rests with the women.
“The colours have stayed up,” adds Quill, when asked if the men’s defeat has brought any extra pressure on his charges to get the job done for the county. “Just walking down through our own town of Tralee there, the flags are up.
“I got a text from a friend of mine who runs a printing business, he said they were inundated with posters for the girls.
“I was coming out of Croke Park last Sunday week and the amount of people who came up and said, ‘It’s over to ye now, it’s up to ye now.’
“There’s no pressure, the preparations have been going very well. The girls are really tuned in.
“I don’t think the men losing has any real impact on the women winning. But look, I think there’s huge pressure on Dublin to go for the double, you know!”
When the sides met in the round-robin stages of this year’s championship, Kerry beat Dublin in a match full of aggression and physicality at Parnell Park. It felt like a statement victory for Kerry in their bid to establish themselves as the top team in the country.
“On and off the field that day, us and Mick [Bohan] had a couple of words, but we’ve huge respect for what Mick has done in the game,” says Long.
“Mick has been very good to me and Declan since we took the job, he has been supportive of us. We might have relit a fire in Mick’s belly that day at Parnell Park and maybe he is feeding off that as well.”
With Síofra O’Shea out injured, Louise Ní Mhuircheartaigh will captain Kerry on Sunday. Ní Mhuircheartaigh is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in the game never to have won the Brendan Martin Cup.
The 32-year-old forward has been in sensational form this season and enters the final as the top scorer in the championship with 4-24. She hit 1-10 against Mayo in the semi-final.
[ Carla Rowe: ‘Last year was such a shock for us, but it has driven us forward’Opens in new window ]
“I think Louise is probably closer to the end [of her career] than she is to the beginning and she’d be the first to say that,” says Long.
“But some of the football she’s played in the last two or three years has been exceptional.
“She’s an unbelievably accurate kicker. It’s very hard for any back in the country to mark her because you don’t know if she’s going to turn on her right, turn on her left, it’s very hard to know which is the weaker foot.
“Louise would be the first out on the field, kicking balls, she’d be the last to leave and she does it back at home in Gallarus as well, she takes bags of balls off us nearly every training session.
“She’s an exceptional talent, probably a generational talent, up there with the likes of Cora Staunton, Geraldine O’Shea, and Mary Jo Curran, and she’ll go down as one of the best ever.”
