Eamonn Murray is only half joking when he suggests that a thank-you card from the Ladies’ Gaelic Football Association would have been nice, for all the Meath ladies did for the game last year.
“Just to say thanks, that’s all,” smiled the Meath manager. “You are not expecting a big cheque or anything like that. Because that [Meath’s breakthrough] is not going to happen again.”
Murray is referencing Meath’s rise from relative obscurity — they played Sligo in a Division Three league final just three years ago — to the summit of the game and the inspirational effect they’ve clearly had on panels nationwide.
Dublin and Cork, for example, who’d divvied up each of the TG4 All-Ireland senior titles between 2005 and 2020, were both shot down by the time this year’s semi-finals came around. If Meath can do it, why can’t we, appeared to be the mantra.
Kerry could yet pick Meath’s pockets on Sunday and deny them back-to-back All-Ireland senior titles but even if that happens, it’s still been some story.
Truth be told, it could be a final chapter of sorts for Meath this weekend because, according to Murray, his backroom team is about to break up. Eugene Eivers, Meath’s renowned strength and conditioning expert, has been linked with the new Colm O’Rourke-led men’s management team in the county. In a previous life, Eivers helped Jim McGuinness’s Donegal to All-Ireland success in 2012 and later worked in Mick O’Dowd’s Meath set-up.
On the playing front, Vikki Wall, the reigning ladies’ player of the year, will shortly head to the AFLW and North Melbourne while midfielder Orlagh Lally is destined for the Fremantle Dockers. Murray confirmed, too, that 2021 player of the year nominee Emma Troy, a clubmate in Boardsmill, is set to take an extended non-playing break in Australia. All of which could mean that the present group has just one more game together. A last dance.
“I know most of the coaches are leaving,” said Murray. “Will I stay or not? I don’t know. I won’t tell anybody until after the match, or a week later, we’ll see what happens.”
As for the link between Eivers and O’Rourke’s set-up with the men’s team, Murray shrugged.
“He hasn’t mentioned it to me and I mean that,” said Murray. “He’s very good at his job, I wouldn’t be surprised if he [was approached].”
If he’d been thinking in more cynical terms, Murray himself might have bowed out at the top last year, after the maiden All-Ireland triumph.
“It would be easy to do that but that would have been a bad thing to do, wouldn’t it?” he said. “It wouldn’t be nice.”
Murray talks about an unbreakable bond among the group, particularly among the players themselves. On Tuesday, many of them were off golfing together. Their humility grounds them and motivates them.
“We always tried to tell them all year, ‘You are from a very humble place’,” said Murray. “Most are from little country clubs, ‘keep that underdog thing in your heads, don’t listen to what anyone says’.”
Among them, Wall walks as an equal, even if, as Murray believes, the AFLW have designs on her being ‘the face of ladies’ AFL’ in the coming years.
“I’d always say to Vikki, ‘thank you’,” revealed Murray. “She’d say, ‘for what?’ And I’d say, ‘for staying Vikki Wall’. Because she never changed. She’s the nicest person to every child in Meath, always the last person leaving the pitch. It’s a great bond we have with the players, the craic we have. Go watch any of our sessions, the fun we have, long may it last.”
According to Murray, Wall’s impending departure to Australia is never mentioned within the group, though he knows the entire brouhaha and the expectation weighs on the Dunboyne All-Star at times.
“I don’t know how she is holding it together,” he said. “There’s a lot of stuff in her head, college and that. She’s a very level-headed girl.”
Winners
Against Donegal in the semi-final, Wall missed the majority of the last 10 minutes due to a questionable booking. Meath outscored Donegal by 0-3 to 0-1 in that period. The theme of digging deep when the need is greatest has been running strong for several seasons now.
“That all came from winning last year I think, those tough games like against Cork last year,” said Murray.
For Meath supporters and neutrals, it’s been an enjoyable ride, watching it all unfold.
“No matter where my kids go on holiday … I’ll give you an example, last week, one of them was in Toronto and a local team asked her to train them,” said Murray.
“It wasn’t planned. But when they heard where she was from, sure it was the biggest thing that ever happened to them. They were all such big fans of the Meath ladies. Another daughter was down in Limerick and they heard where she was from and it was all buzz, buzz, buzz. It’s great. That’s what I mean when I say we have done a lot for ladies’ football.”
