After the excitement of the All-Ireland hurling and football finals, next Sunday it’s the Ladies turn with three finals in Croke Park. Last year the Ladies celebrated their 50th anniversary and Kerry, once one of the top counties from the early days of the Ladies games, beat Galway to win the Brendan Martin Cup for the first time since 1993. In the Ladies games counties tend to dominate for a few years and then drop off. Kerry won nine in a row in the early days of the LGFA, then it was the turn of Waterford, Monaghan and Mayo to dominate. Cork didn’t win their first final until 2005 and it would be another five years before Dublin won one. In this decade Meath have made a breakthrough and on Sunday they will be bidding to win their 3rd final in this decade when they play Dublin, aka The Jackies.
The Royalettes have two excellent players in Vicki Wall, who has spent time playing Aussie Rules Down Under, and Emma Duggan. But it was Wall’s sister Sarah who was the star of their semi-final win over Kerry. Dublin have a match-winner in the versatile Hannah Tyrrell. The 34-year-old from Clondalkin starting playing Gaelic football for her local club Round Towers and later switched to soccer and rugby, playing for the Irish national team, but she returned to Gaelic football. Hannah used to play in goal for Round Towers, but has now moved to the northside of the city where she plays for Na Fianna and now lines out in the forward line; she is also an excellent free-taker. It’s going to be close, but I think Meath might win it; they seem to have a younger, fresher team. When Meath played Kerry in the 2022 final it attracted a record crowd of 46,400. After a resurgence of their men’s team this year, I reckon the Meath supporters will travel to Croke Park in large numbers again on Sunday.
We all know about the MacCarthy Cup and Sam Maguire Cup, but the Brendan Martin Cup also has an interesting back story. When the Ladies GAA was founded in Thurles in 1974 they didn’t have a cup to present to the winners of their first-ever final between Tipperary and Offaly in Durrow. So Offaly native Brendan Martin, who was one of the founding fathers of the new association, bought a cup himself from John J. Cooke’s jewellers, which is still there in Fownes Street, Dublin. The cup was later named in his honor and some years later a new cup was made in Kilkenny by master silversmith Des Byrne, who had also crafted the new Sam Maguire Cup.
The senior final starts at 4.15, while at 1.45 the Intermediate final between Laois and Tyrone gets under way. The players from Antrim and Louth will have a very early start with a 11.45am throw-in when they contest the Junior final.
