While it’s been a year like few others for our sportswomen on the international front, it was back home in September that Meath produced one of the stories of this , or any other, when they beat Dublin to win their first ever senior All-Ireland football title.
Their 1-11 to 0-12 victory over a team going for their fifth successive All-Ireland was one of the biggest upsets the women’s game has ever seen, perhaps the biggest of the lot.
Meath’s story has been well documented at this stage, but it’s worth recalling that it was only four years ago that they chose to drop down to intermediate level because they were getting so many hammerings by senior opponents, their lowest point a 7-22 to 0-3 trouncing by Cork.
A day like that would be enough to persuade most to hang up their boots, but Vikki Wall was one of three players, along with goalkeeper Monica McGuirk and captain Shauna Ennis, who started in that 40 point defeat back in 2015 who also lined out against Cork in this year's semi-finals.
When they trailed by seven points with less than five minutes to go, a happy ending looked unlikely, but they completed a remarkable comeback as two goals in the final minute sent the game into extra time. There was no stopping them by then, a two point victory putting them into their first ever senior final having only come up from the intermediate ranks the year before.
Wall, the 2020 Intermediate Player of the Year, has been a huge part of her county’s rise from the ashes of those dark days when, as she put it herself, “all we did was lose”.
And it was the 23-year-old who set the tone in a thriller of a final when her driving run from midfield in the first minute led to a free which Stacey Grimes converted. When Emma Duggan lobbed Dublin goalkeeper Ciara Trant from distance to score the game’s only goal, putting Meath four points up, Wall’s pre-match insistence that they were capable of rattling the defending champions looked less fanciful.
It was a stunning performance from Eamonn Murray’s side who held their nerve when Dublin edged their way back in to the game, Wall’s tireless player-of-the-match display a major factor in their success.
By now, the Dunboyne woman is weighed down by awards, among them the GPA footballer of the month for both August and September. Her mantelpiece could yet become even more cluttered after she was nominated, along with team-mates Duggan and Emma Troy, for the player of the year award, as well as for an All-Star. And to the collection, she can add our sportswoman of the month for September.
Previous monthly winners (the awards run from December 2020 to November 2021, inclusive):
December: Aoife Doyle (Camogie) and Sinead Goldrick (Gaelic football). The pair were both chosen as the player of the match in their respective All-Ireland finals, Doyle's display in the Kilkenny attack against Galway helping her county end a run of three successive final defeats, while an outstanding performance against Cork by Goldrick was a major factor in Dublin completing a four-in-a-row.
January: Nadia Power (Athletics). The Dubliner enjoyed a terrific start to the year, setting a new Irish 800m indoor record and knocking another two seconds off the mark a fortnight later, her form ultimately earning her a place on the Olympic team for the 800m. Tokyo, though, proved a bridge too far, Power bowing out in her heat, but she'll take huge encouragement from her 2021 form.
February: Rachael Blackmore (Horse racing). Currently on the mend after fracturing her ankle in a fall at Killarney in July, Blackmore's 2021 had been a magical one until then, the highlights her historic Aintree Grand National triumph and her six winners at Cheltenham that earned her the festival's leading jockey award. And she finished runner-up in the Irish jockeys championship with 92 winners.
March: Leona Maguire (Golf). Even before her remarkable Solheim Cup performances, having become the first Irish woman to represent Europe in the event, Maguire had already enjoyed an outstanding year on the LPGA Tour, ten top-16 finishes and five top-10s, including two runners-up spots, moving her inside the world's top fifty.
April: Orla O'Dwyer (Australian Rules). O'Dwyer became just the second Irish woman to win the Aussie Rules AFLW Premiership title when she was part of the Brisbane Lions team that beat Adelaide Crows in April's Grand Final. One of the country's most gifted dual players, she returned home to play in both the camogie and football All-Ireland championships for Tipperary, reaching the camogie semi-finals.
May: Katie Taylor (Boxing). Taylor retained her WBC, WBA, IBF and WBO lightweight titles with one of the grittiest displays of her career when she fought England's Natasha Jonas. That win took her professional record to 18-0 - she made it 19-0 last month when she defended her titles with a unanimous points decision over Jennifer Han in Leeds.
June: Kellie Harrington (Boxing). Even before she set sail for Tokyo Harrington had made our list of monthly award winners by triumphing at the Olympic qualifier in Paris, beating reigning IBF super featherweight world champion Maiva Hamadouche in the quarter-finals before getting the better of Britain's Caroline Dubois in the final. Once she got to Japan? Pure gold.
July: Aifric Keogh, Eimear Lambe, Fiona Murtagh and Emily Hegarty (Rowing). The quartet won Ireland's first medal of the Olympic Games when they produced a stirring effort in the women's four final to come back from fifth in the race around the 1,000 metre mark to power through the final 1,000m, finishing in third behind world champions Australia and the European champion the Netherlands.
August: Katie-George Dunlevy and Eve McCrystal (Cycling) and Ellen Keane (Swimming). The trio had golden experiences at the Paralympics, Keane winning a thriller of a 100m breaststroke final when she recorded a personal best to hold off New Zealand’s Sophie Pascoe, while Dunlevy and McCrystal helped themselves to three medals in the space of one gruelling week, beginning with silver in the individual pursuit and then double gold, in the tandem time trial and then the road race.
