‘Keys to the Kingdom’ – The Big Interview with Kerry’s Anna Galvin

In the days that followed their final success over Galway at Croke Park on Sunday, August 4, Anna Galvin and her Kingdom colleagues were able to get a full sense of what winning this year’s TG4 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship has truly meant to the people of Kerry.

By DAIRE WALSH

The day after ending their 31-year wait to collect the Brendan Martin Cup for the 12th time, the Kerry squad embarked on a prolonged tour of the Kingdom’s various towns, villages and clubs. The likes of Knocknagoshel (home of veteran midfielder Lorraine Scanlon), Castleisland and Killarney were amongst the spots that the team called to at the beginning of the week, but it was never going to be possible to fit every place into a single journey.

Following a trip to North Kerry on Tuesday to give winning captain Niamh Carmody of Finuge/St Senan’s a fitting homecoming, the squad eventually found themselves passing through a number of locations in West Kerry on Wednesday. It is the Thursday afternoon after the All-Ireland when we catch up with Galvin, who has been blown away by the reception the players have received throughout their tour of the county.

“We were a little bit taken aback as to how many people were actually turning out in every single spot. It was unbelievable and people are so happy for us. It has just been class. As you can probably tell, our voices are gone from all the chatting and all the shouting all week, and our hands are sore from the signing of jerseys!” acknowledged Galvin, who played the full 60 minutes at midfield in Kerry’s All-Ireland triumph.

“We were here (West Kerry) last night and we were just walking up the street there this morning and we were like ‘lads, it’s surreal!’ We did a lap of the town with a pipe band last night. It’s just mad to think that all this stuff is being done for us. It has been super, a super couple of days.”

A panellist when they lost to Cork in the All-Ireland senior football decider of 2012, Galvin had plenty of set-backs in the green and gold of Kerry before she captained them to a Brendan Martin Cup final appearance against Meath 10 years later.

Their reversal in that 2022 showpiece to the Royals and at the hands of Dublin 12 months later led to some doubts as to whether Galvin and senior squad members such as Scanlon, Louise Ní Mhuircheartaigh and Cait Lynch were ever going to get their moment in the sun. Yet the promised land was finally reached last Sunday week when the Kingdom overcame Galway on a score of 3-14 to 0-11 and the closing minutes of the contest will live long in Galvin’s memory.

“There was plenty of days where we had to do an awful lot of soul searching and it’s just so, so lovely not to have to do that this time around. It was always this thing that was kind of hanging over us. ‘We want to win an All-Ireland, we want to win an All-Ireland’.

“I think for me, the third goal went in and I put my hands in the air, and I nearly started crying on the field. I was like ‘this is it, oh my God’ and I was like ‘get yourself together Anna, there’s still another five minutes left in this game!’ Then Louise came off the field to rapturous applause in Croke Park and I was like ‘ah, this is what dreams are made of’.”

As well as the players themselves, this year’s All-Ireland success feels like just reward for the joint management team of Declan Quill and Darragh Long. Having initially joined as selectors for the latter stages of the 2019 season, this dynamic pair assumed the reins of the Kerry senior side at the end of that year and helped to re-establish the Kingdom as a genuine force in ladies football.

Their All-Ireland final loss to Dublin in 2023 was a tough one to take, but a number of players subsequently set about convincing Quill and Long to stay on for the 2024 league and championship – a move that ultimately paid rich dividends.

“I’m so, so glad that they did stay on. We kind of felt like there was definitely unfinished business there and I remember when we met them. It’s funny, there was a couple of us met and we were all chatting away for a while.

“We were chatting away for maybe 15, 20 minutes. Catching up, just being like ‘ah yeah, how’s things?’ Then the table kind of fell silent and it was like ‘right there lads, down to business, we all know why we’re here!’

“We had to say ‘look, all cards on the table, everyone is going to have to give it their all from management side, from our side. Where were our missing pieces? We need to be able to make sure we’re able to fill those gaps this year.’ Then we were kind of saying ‘okay, look, we can fill these gaps and we can go again. We’ll just go one more’.”

While it won’t be at the forefront of her mind for the next few months – her club commitments to Southern Gaels and her job as an occupational therapist at University Hospital Limerick will take precedence for the remainder of the year – Galvin and Kerry will return to inter-county action for 2025 as defending All-Ireland champions. This is set to be unfamiliar territory for the Kingdom, but Galvin is excited by the prospect of them having less pressure on their shoulders for once.

“It’s just a little bit of a weight off and the team will be able to regroup and we’ll come together and start fresh. There’ll be maybe a little bit more freedom and a little bit less pressure. That’s lovely as well,” Galvin added.

“It’s just nice to be able to, not that we didn’t enjoy it, but you’re a little bit stressed because you’re like ‘okay, we really have to do it this year’. There is that pressure on, whereas that will be gone for whoever of us go back. It’s going to be nice.”