In the month after Kerry won their last All-Ireland women’s senior football title, Billy Bingham whipped up a storm at Windsor Park to try blow Jack Charlton’s 1994 World Cup qualification ambitions off course.
The Derry footballers were still in the middle of a relentless Sam Maguire tour of every nook, cranny and clubhouse across their county, Kilkenny were All-Ireland hurling champions and Gerry Murphy was the Ireland rugby coach. The Six Nations was still the Five Nations.
Mary Robinson was in the Áras and when Eileen Lawlor (Dardis) lifted the All-Ireland title at Croke Park on October 11th, 1993, the president of Ireland was standing over her shoulder, applauding.
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.
Having got married and moved to Meath in 1990, and after commuting from the Royal County to the Kingdom for three years, it felt like the right time to retire. Several other players followed, and Kerry prepared to enter a period of transition.
But the county has been waiting 31 years now for the women’s team to find its way back to the top of the mountain. Eileen remains the last captain of an All-Ireland senior-winning Kerry women’s football team.
“I’m actually so dying to get rid of that title, it’s hard to believe it has been so long,” she says.
The Lawlor sisters of Ardfert, Eileen and Margaret, are among the most decorated siblings in the history of Gaelic games – they have 20 All-Ireland senior medals, ten apiece. Both were part of Kerry’s incredible nine-in-a-row champions between 1982-1990, Margaret had been there in 1976 too while Eileen collected her tenth medal in 1993.
“I was living up in Summerhill at the time, my sister was captain in 1991 and I might have retired if we had won it that year, I don’t know.
“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.”
Waterford had beaten Kerry in the 1991 and 1992 Munster finals, but Kerry exacted revenge in 1993. It was ten years after that before Kerry would beat Waterford again in a provincial decider.
Turned out it wasn’t quite transition Kerry entered after 1993, it was decline.
“Similar to a lot of good teams, there weren’t enough youngsters introduced,” explains Eileen. “It was too hard for younger players to get on the team, so the development wasn’t there.”
As a teacher in Loreto, Navan, Eileen started football in the school and among the players who went through her hands were future Meath stars including Kelsey Nesbitt, Stacey Grimes and Orlagh Lally.
Eileen and her husband Brendan were founding members of the women’s team in Summerhill. Their son, Barry, was a key player in Summerhill’s county triumphs in 2013 and 2023, and he was a regular member of the Meath senior football panel during Andy McEntee’s reign.
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.
Niamh Carmody is hoping to emulate Eileen on Sunday at Croke Park by captaining Kerry to an All-Ireland senior women’s title.
Carmody is in her first year as captain. She succeeded Síofra O’Shea in the role after Carmody’s club, Finuge-St Senan’s, nominated her on the back of winning last year’s county championship in Kerry.
“It’s a massive honour,” she says. “It’s a massive honour for my family and the club. Just delighted to be the captain of such a great bunch. They’re an easy bunch to be captain of.”
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.
Meath beat the Kingdom in the 2022 decider, 3-10 to 1-7, while Dublin got off to a blistering start last summer before running out 0-18 to 1-10 winners in the 2023 showpiece.
“Claire has been fantastic for us this year. Everything she’s done with us, we’ve been able to implement in games. She’s been a phenomenal addition to the group,” says Niamh.
“It has shown in some of the tight games we’ve come through and the confidence that every player is playing with.
“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.”
Ultimately, the outcome of Sunday’s final against Galway will determine if the year has been a success or not for Kerry. They have shown admirable resilience to bounce back again in 2024.
“I suppose after the hurt of the last couple of years, it would be twice as nice,” adds the current Kerry captain. “Look, it would just be a massive achievement for this group of players. We’ve stuck together over the last couple of 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.”
The decision of Declan Quill and Darragh Long to remain on as joint managers was also crucial in holding the panel together after last year’s final heartache.
“You’d nearly be starting from scratch because when a new management comes in they might have a different approach,” says Niamh. “What the lads have poured into Kerry ladies football is phenomenal.
“They were in a relegation final five years ago. Now we’re in our third All-Ireland final in-a-row. That just speaks volumes of them as a management and I think it was vital that they stayed on.”
Eileen was down visiting the homeland around Kerry this week and she will be in Croke Park on Sunday.
“When Dublin were beaten, I suppose it gave everybody that extra bit of energy,” says Kerry’s 1993 All-Ireland-winning captain.
“Dublin played so well last year, there was no team near them. So, when Galway beat them in the quarter-final it opened up the championship.
“Just like Armagh winning last Sunday, both Kerry and Galway will be looking at Sunday’s final thinking this is their year.”
Kerry are 31 years waiting for this moment.
Weekend fixtures
All-Ireland women’s football finals
SFC final: Kerry v Galway, Croke Park, 4.15pm - TG4
IFC final: Leitrim v Tyrone, Croke Park, 1.45pm - TG4
JFC final: Fermanagh v Louth, Croke Park, 11.45am - TG4
