It begins again on Saturday, this Dublin-Kerry rivalry. Not that it ever ended, the winter just brought a pause.
Kerry were the form team in women’s football for much of 2023 but Dublin finished the year with the Brendan Martin Cup. Kerry won the league, Dublin won the war.
Division One of the 2024 Lidl Ladies National Football League will throw-in with a mouthwatering rematch between the game’s top two teams – with Kerry visiting Parnell Park on Saturday for a 5.15 clash with the Dubs, a game which will be shown live on TG4.
When Kerry beat Galway in last year’s league final at Croke Park, Síofra O’Shea was the Kingdom captain. The Caherdaniel forward then played a central role in helping Kerry advance to an All-Ireland SFC semi-final against Mayo, only to suffer a cruciate ligament tear in her left knee during training in the build-up to that clash last July.
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It was her second cruciate injury, at just 21 years of age. In June 2021 she injured her right knee in a league game against Wexford and didn’t return until the following May.
However, three weeks after her cruciate tear last summer, incredibly O’Shea came off the bench during the second half of the All-Ireland final against Dublin.
It wasn’t enough to get the Kingdom over the line, but it demonstrated what an All-Ireland means to this Kerry team. That journey starts again this weekend, but O’Shea won’t be on the field against Dublin at any stage.
“I’m four months post-surgery at the moment, so I’ve a lot of hard work done but still a good bit to go. I won’t be back for the league, no,” she says.
The championship though, that’s when O’Shea hopes to be back in the green and gold again.
“That would be the plan, yeah, but every ACL recovery is different. It’s going very well at the moment, there have been no setbacks so far so hopefully it stays that way.”
Despite not being able to play this weekend against Dublin, O’Shea is aware neither team will want to give an inch at the outset of the 2024 season. And she feels the scars of last August’s 0-18 to 1-10 All-Ireland final defeat to Dublin can only start to fully heal when the new season begins again for Kerry.
“Getting injured before the semi-final was heartbreaking for me last year but we turned the focus to the team immediately and they put in a great performance to beat Mayo in Semple Stadium,” she recalls.
“But it was probably a difficult build-up to the final, not being fully involved, doing my own recovery and rehab to try get out there on the day. I suppose you go through a lot of emotions and to not get over the line two years in-a-row is hard to take.
“People probably won’t fully get over it until they start playing games again in the league.”
And no better way to start dreaming of Croke Park again than laying down a marker in Dublin’s back yard this weekend.
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