Gaelic Games

Hannah Tyrrell says All-Ireland victory fulfils a long-held dream

Star of Dublin’s final triumph points to quarter-final victory over Donegal as the moment when players believed something special was brewing

Hannah Tyrrell of Dublin scores a point despite the efforts of Kerry's Emma Costello during the All-Ireland final. Tyrrell kicked eight points in the first half, four from play, in a memorable personal display. Photograph: John Sheridan/Sportsfile

Paul Keane
Tue Aug 15 2023 - 05:00

On a piece of blue strapping on her right wrist, Hannah Tyrrell had three words written during the All-Ireland football final. ‘We never stop’.

It was presumably more a command than a statement, a nudge towards the relentlessness she displayed in the first half of Dublin’s defeat of Kerry. Nine shots, eight points. Four from frees, three of which she helped to win. And an assist for an Orlagh Nolan point. All in half an hour.

The phrase also amounted to a neat summary of the 33-year-old’s own high- octane sporting career. FAI Cup winner 2011, Six Nations winner 2015, All-Ireland winner 2023.

She has done plenty more besides but those will be the career highlights that will go down in bold print whenever Tyrrell does put the boots away.

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Now married, and a mother to baby Aoife, she may very well figure that bowing out as an All-Ireland medalist makes sense for her. What she is certain about is that life is at its sweetest right now.

“It’s absolutely at the top,” said Tyrrell, when asked where Sunday’s win ranks in her career achievements. “It’s something I’ve been dreaming about for a very, very long time, worked so hard to get. Obviously all the other things I’ve achieved are phenomenal but this was the one I was going after.”

And yet if she’d figured that her timing was simply off when it came to playing for Dublin teams, she could have been forgiven.

Dublin's Hannah Tyrrell celebrates after the All-Ireland final victory over Kerry with her daughter, seven-week-old Aoife. Photograph: Laszlo Geczo/Inpho

Initially a goalkeeper in 2014, she left for rugby midway through that season and winced as the team reached an All-Ireland final without her. Then, when she returned after Dublin’s four-in-a-row years between 2017 and 2020, she ran into a high-functioning Meath team that claimed the next two titles.

By last autumn, weeks after an All-Ireland quarter-final defeat to Donegal, her Dublin project appeared to be on the verge of bottoming out.

“I wouldn’t say she saw last October that she was going to win an All-Ireland,” said Dublin manager Mick Bohan last Sunday evening. “In fairness to her, she turned that one around.”

Injuries, retirements and sabbaticals – Ciara Trant, Jess Tobin, Sinéad Goldrick, Kate McDaid, Nicole Owens and Lyndsey Davey all started that 2022 game against Donegal but didn’t feature this year – set Dublin back at the beginning of the season but there seemed to be more to the group’s frustration than just that.

“Mick’s not wrong,” said Tyrrell, referencing Bohan’s claim that the group was ‘on our knees’ last autumn. “I’m not going to go into details but there were some really tough moments in that October, November period.

“We had lost a lot of players, things weren’t going the right way for us. We were very unhappy about a lot of things but we came together, management got things spot on, players put in the work and everybody, all 50 people within our squad and management team, just managed to make it work and it’s all come to fruition.”

It was still a close run thing, timing-wise. Dublin lost National League games to Kerry and Galway and when they ran into Kerry again in the group stage of the championship, they were given another lesson.

Kate Sullivan and Sinead Aherne celebrate after the All-Ireland final. Photograph: Laszlo Geczo/Inpho

Eventually, when the need was greatest, they delivered in spades with big wins over Donegal, Cork and Kerry in the All-Ireland knock-out stages.

“Nothing just happens by chance in this game,” said Tyrrell of how the management built towards an August climax.

“Sami Dowling had us prepped perfectly, with the S&C, to have us peaking at the right time. That worked out really well for us, we had a few blips along the way but we didn’t let that faze us. We had belief that if we could put in a performance, we’d win.”

Dublin beat Donegal by 3-12 to 0-6 in the quarter-finals last month and, for Tyrrell, that was the moment things really felt like they were starting to come together.

“Obviously it was great to win the Leinster final but Donegal had been looming over us from last year,” she said. “Once we got over that line, and so comprehensively, we knew we had something special here and we still had another gear to go.”

With injured players potentially returning to Dublin in 2024 and rising stars like Niamh Crowley and Niamh Donlon now All-Ireland winners, the future looks brighter.

Veteran attacker Sinéad Aherne, 37, may finally call it a day, however, after 20 years in blue. The four-in-a-row winning captain returned from retirement midway through the championship and came on in each of their last four games, ultimately winning her sixth All-Ireland medal.

“We will never see the likes of a player of Sinéad Aherne’s calibre, both on and off the pitch; her leadership, the quality, the skill set that she has, she’s brought so much to this team in a time where we probably really needed that experience,” said Tyrrell.

“She didn’t come back in expecting game time or minutes, she wanted to put in that leadership off the pitch. It was great for her to get on. She is the greatest Dublin footballer we’ve ever seen.”

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