Gaelic Games

Meath’s Monica McGuirk targets Leinster title to complete medal set

Royal County face Tyrone at beginning of an NFL Division One campaign in Newtownstewart

Monica McGuirk. Photograph: Sportsfile
Monica McGuirk. Photograph: Sportsfile
Daire Walsh
Sat Jan 25 2025 - 06:00

They may have accumulated a significant number of honours in recent years, but there is still one item that Monica McGuirk and the Meath ladies footballers would like to scratch off their bucket list in 2025.

A three-time TG4 All Star winner, the Duleek/Bellewstown goalkeeper was between the sticks when the Royal County secured back-to-back TG4 All-Ireland senior football championship titles in 2021 and 2022. She also includes a TG4 All-Ireland intermediate championship among her list of honours, as well as Lidl National Football League triumphs in Divisions 1, 2 and 3.

Yet despite enjoying remarkable success on a national level, a Leinster senior football championship is the one major honour that has eluded Meath in the modern age (their last final victory in the competition was back in 2000). The Royals have lost the last three top-tier provincial showpieces to Dublin and McGuirk acknowledged there is an ambition within their group to go a step further this year.

“One of our main focuses has to be – and is this year – a Leinster title. Because again it’s one of the medals that still isn’t there yet for a lot of girls. It’s something that we want to drive on to try and get. Like last year, it’s a goal of ours and we’re not thinking any further ahead than the league and the Leinster championship. For now anyway,” McGuirk said.

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When Meath faced Dublin in last year’s Leinster final at Croke Park, McGuirk lined out in GAA HQ for the 11th time in her career. Considering it wasn’t until the TG4 All-Ireland intermediate championship decider of 2018 that she had her first experience of playing in the Jones’ Road venue, this is a remarkable statistic for the dependable netminder.

Even though that initial outing a little under seven years ago didn’t go according to plan – Meath lost to Tyrone on a score of 6-8 to 1-14 – it remains a memorable occasion for McGuirk.

“I remember us going into the championship and one of our goals was that players wanted to get to Croke Park. We had a meeting before championship started and we were to write down what our goal is for championship. We had to write it down and I’d say if not 90, nearly 85 per cent of players had written down they want to get to Croke Park for an All-Ireland final day.

“That was our ambition for the start of the championship season in 2018. Obviously it didn’t go the way we wanted it to, but it’s still one of the best days of my career, because it was the first time I got to play in Croke Park. It’s a day I’ll obviously never forget for various reasons, but that was a big step. It put us on the path to what came after that.

“There for a period of time between 2021 and 2022, you were in Croke Park three or four times a year. It was becoming very second nature to us, but like all teams know and all players know, you can’t take things like that for granted. Because you don’t know when it is going to come around again.”

Following that All-Ireland intermediate final duel, Meath next faced Tyrone in a competitive fixture on January 26, 2020 – a Lidl National Football League Division 2 opening round encounter in Dunganny that the Royals won 2-14 to 2-6.

Tomorrow is exactly five years on from this fixture and now Meath are once again facing the Red Hand at the beginning of an NFL campaign, albeit this time their meeting is in Division 1 at Newtownstewart (throw-in 2pm).

While she was back in county training before Christmas, McGuirk – who has been succeeded in the role of team captain by Aoibhín Cleary – was subsequently out of the country for a number of weeks. However, she has returned to being a part of Meath’s preseason preparations in the past couple of weeks and is raring to go for this weekend’s trip to Tyrone.

“I actually went back to training before I went on holidays. We flew out on the 16th of December, but I was back for preseason at the beginning of November. We were doing gym and stuff like that, and had one or two pitch sessions before I left.

“Obviously took the break then for the month and was only back there last Tuesday week. We’re all systems go now for when we play Tyrone in the first round.

“Obviously when you’re away for a month you do miss a certain amount of pitch training sessions, but I had my gym programmes to work away on when I was on holiday, so I was able to get a lot of them done when I was away.”