Ladies Gaelic Football

CLUB FOCUS with Mary McNerney also part of this management team. That was to be the first of three senior championships in a row for the club, with their fifth and last crown collected in 2003, and while the past decade was a lean one by their own standards, the glory days seem to be coming back. Ballymore players were a consistent presence on Longford underage teams throughout the 2010s, so for many, it was a matter of time before the club returned to real prominence. However, it must be noted that the Ballymore ladies have represented Longford in both underage/adult grades in this period and have had key players on the All Ireland Junior winning 2016 team, namely Aisling Reynolds, Emer Heaney & Megan Creegan. Underage players Sorcha Dawson, Nicole Neilon, Siobháan Tully, Shauna Heaney, Avril Wilson, Ciara Heaney and Eileen Boyle were all players involved on the successful Longford teams during the decade, and now many of those players are the backbone of the club's current revival. Intermediate championship success in 2020 was followed by a great run through Leinster, and while Covid prevented them from winning the Leinster Junior championship in the same calendar year, their patience was rewarded when they produced a devastating performance to overcome Kilmore of Wexford by 2-19 to 1-11 in the long-delayed decider last month. And if you want to know how deep those roots have grown, two players who were part of those 1997 historic successes for Longford and Ballymore were on the field at O'Moore Park in Portlaoise for that game. Fiona Gettings (formerly Fiona Blessington) kicked 1-4 from midfield, while Mary Kiernan was between the sticks for the momentous occasion. "I've been repurposed and remade into a goalkeeper in the latter end of my career, we're very efficient here in Ballymore, everybody has a role to play somewhere!" said Kiernan, who also serves as secretary of her club and registrar for the county into the bargain. "Fiona is on another level again, she ran a sub-three hour marathon during the lockdown and she gets up and down the pitch like someone 20 years younger, and that's a great inspiration for everyone and anyone who comes into the club." Gettings is one of Longford's greatest ever players, winner of three LGFA All Stars, and she shows no sign of stopping either. Here again, the unique geographical and cultural setting of the club starts to show on the field, as there is a remarkable resilience and defiance associated with the current playing group, and the club as a whole. Despite the one-sided final score, in the early stages of the Leinster final against Kilmore it looked as if the Wexford club were the ones more likely to kick on and win with a bit to spare. Wexford county players Niamh Moore and Lauren Cousins were dominant in the middle third, Cousins got in for the first goal of the game that was probably quite preventable from a Ballymore point of view, and yet there was no sense of Ballymore ever losing their way. Gettings and Aisling Reynolds set about asserting themselves at midfield, and once they started to stop Kilmore running through them, the defence stood tall with experienced leaders Marie Martin, Deirdre Monaghan and Rachel Cassidy controlling their opponents and the supply of ball into the Ballymore forward line and Emer Heaney started to flow, leading to a ten-point haul for the Longford county star. "Football is such a huge part of this area, and there's great support for the club all around" said Mary. "Some of us were lucky enough to be part of local school success in Moyne and Longford Convent, and in the Cnoc Mhuire secondary schools side that won five All-Ireland titles under our coach Mick Flynn. Many of us played boys and girls football right up to U-14 and U-16 with St. Mary's, Ballymore and the Sean Connolly teams. We then moved to playing the girls football only, as us girls were not allowed to play with the boys beyond U14 in later years. Football, it just became a part of life. Within the parish and our local community on both sides of the border here, there's a huge passion for the sport, men and women, and that's the type of player that comes into the club. "It's not that we have a huge catchment area or anything. Girls play from the parish of Granard, and mainly, it's just this parish now. We'd have a few others since our club was formed from surrounding parishes of Abbeylara and Ballinalee as well. Ballinalee have an have underage team now but they're a newer club on the scene, so we would have been the closest club for some girls and they've stayed with us. But we certainly have to make the best of what we have, and I think we're doing that with our academy and development teams. Of course like any club, at the younger age levels it's all about having fun, making it an enjoyable experience for girls to be out and about, getting active with their friends, team interaction and character building – but the competitive nature will always come through, and the character that the current team showed to stay ready to play football through a seven-month break was incredible." The solidarity and community spirit in the group shone through before Christmas, when the players did a collective 400km cycle (the distance of the round trip down and back from Kilmore!) to raise funds for the club's Leinster championship journey. It was an incredible success, as yet again the passion and fervour for the sport shone through. In a county with just 14 ladies clubs playing adult football, the only way to compensate is for every ounce of effort and commitment to be poured into the cause right from the start. In their short history, not yet three full decades, Ballymore have embodied that spirit as much as anyone, and if they continue in the same vein, there's no sign of them stopping any time soon. "OF COURSE LIKE ANY CLUB, AT THE YOUNGER AGE LEVELS, IT'S ALL ABOUT HAVING FUN, MAKING IT AN ENJOABLE EXPERIENCE" www.ladiesgaelic.ie | SUMMER 2021 | 51

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