Ten-time All-Ireland winner Eileen Lawlor (Dardis) was the last woman to captain Kerry to the All-Ireland title in 1993 and she’s hoping the county's famine is almost over
Ten-time All-Ireland winner Eileen Lawlor was the last woman to captain Kerry to the All-Ireland title in 1993 – she’s hopeful the famine is almost overKerry captain Niamh Carmody in action against Galway's Aoife Ní Cheallaigh. 'I think we have belief within ourselves that we can get over the line,' says Carmody. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho
Eileen scored 2-1 in that final against Laois as she claimed a remarkable 10th All-Ireland senior triumph. It was to be her last act as a Kerry footballer, captaining the county to All-Ireland glory. It was quite a way to bow out. “I’m actually so dying to get rid of that title, it’s hard to believe it has been so long,” she says.
“The other side of it, I suppose you just wanted to beat Waterford again in Munster. You wanted to try go on and see if you could win another All-Ireland, prove you were still good enough.” But this week has been all about building towards the other green and gold love in the Dardis household as the Kerry women’s team prepare for a third successive All-Ireland final appearance – having lost the last two.
And the players are not hiding away from the hurt of the last two years. Indeed, the Kerry management brought in sports psychologist Claire Thornton to work with the group this season in a bid to make them mentally stronger. “You’d have a lot of different tools; visualisation, writing down things before training you want to work on, keeping it fresh in your head. There are lots of tools that she has brought to the panel that have stood to me fairly well over the year.”
“We’ve put a good bit of pressure on ourselves. From the start of the year, this is where we wanted to be, I think we have belief within ourselves that we can get over the line.” Eileen was down visiting the homeland around Kerry this week and she will be in Croke Park on Sunday.
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