Captain Curley is optimistic Tipp can challenge for honours

LADIES FOOTBALL: TG4 All-Ireland Senior Championship Preview

By Thomas Conway

TIPPERARY v GALWAY

Templetuohy

Sunday 25th June

Throw-in @ 2.00pm

Referee: TBC

When Maria Curley talks football, one is immediately prompted to sit up and listen. The 26-year-old Templemore woman is eloquent and articulate. She talks about the game with passion and speaks about Tipperary with genuine fervour.

Gaelic Football is part of who she is, part of her intrinsic make-up, an element of her inner psyche. By day she is Maria the physio, but once she downs tools at 4.00pm, everything shifts. The focus turns to training, matches, strategy and analysis. The game dominates her agenda, fills her schedule. Football is to Maria what films are to Spielberg: an all-consuming passion, honed throughout childhood and nurtured in adolescence. She doesn’t just play the game, she lives it.

Tipperary manager Peter Creedon didn’t give her the captaincy for no reason. Curley was chosen because of her leadership qualities, her humble and grounded persona. She’s proud to captain her county, deeply proud, but she’s also a believer. She genuinely believes that this Tipp team has the potential to land silverware, to achieve success.

Right now, the focus is on this year, this moment, but even she acknowledges that Tipp are in the midst of a longer-term project. The Premier County are not expected to feature at the business end of this year’s championship, but Curley has other ideas. Tipp have shown glimmers of promise thus far this season. Their ten competitive games have been peppered with moments of sparkling attacking football, but results haven’t necessarily followed. Consistency has been an issue, but some of their performances have been nonetheless impressive.

From now on, however, things get serious. Tipperary have been drawn in a group alongside perennial contenders Galway and Munster champions Cork. They’ll confront the Tribeswomen next Sunday in Templetuohy. Curley can’t wait, but she acknowledges the fact that escaping from the group will require two heroic performances within the space of seven short days.

“First and foremost, we’re looking forward it, looking forward to the Championship,” she began.

“Obviously, we’ve got Galway at home on the 25th, so that’s kind of our main focus at the moment, we’re not really looking much beyond that to be honest. So that will certainly be a big game.

“But we have a tough group, with Cork in there as well, so we’re under no illusions.

“We would have been happy enough with our Munster campaign - I know we didn’t get any wins, but we put together a couple of good performances and we kind of figured a couple of things out about our team and stuff like that.

“I think we’re lucky in Munster that we have such a competitive province - we got three really tough competitive games for instance, and they have prepared us for the All-Ireland series.

“We’re training well, most of the players are in good form. We have a couple of injuries but nothing too serious, so hopefully we’ll get those tidied up before the Championship kicks off.”

DRIPPING WITH TALENT

Anyone who knows anything about the ladies’ game will be aware that this Tipperary side can play football. Their ranks are swollen with talent - Aishling Moloney is the leading light, but there are plenty of others, Curley among them.

The prospect of All-Ireland success seems a little distant at this moment in time, but if the past few years have taught us anything, it’s that miracles do happen. Meath illustrated that. Their back-to-back All-Ireland successes have repainted the canvas, dramatically altering the football landscape in a manner foreseen by almost nobody.

Curley admires them, admires what they’ve done for the game, the status they’ve given it, the aura they’ve created. There was a time when Tipp could defeat that Meath team, but the Royals have since written a new chapter. They are now the queens of the ladies’ game, the standard bearers. Their evolution was quick, but as Curley notes, there were multiple reasons underpinning their success.

“Look, their story is amazing. It really, really is,” she said of Meath.

“When I think back on it, we were playing them in All-Ireland semi-finals and finals at intermediate level in 2017 and 2019 - and beating them as well, beating them comfortably. So, for them to then go on and win two senior All-Irelands was amazing.

“You almost look at yourself and wonder could we have been there. You think, how did they do that. But I think they got a really good gameplan and they also got really, really fit. And really the most important thing was that they stuck together as a group. They’ve kept the majority of their team together for the last number of years. I know they’ve lost a few now to the AFLW, but up until that point, from their intermediate success to their senior success, they kept the majority of their team together, and I think that stood to them.”

Meath have lost a few players, but so too have Tipperary. As things stand, five of Tipp’s best players - Aisling McCarthy, Aishling Moloney, Orla O’Dwyer, Anna Rose Kennedy, and Niamh Martin - are either already in Australia or are preparing to take up contracts down under in the near future. So, what does Curley make of it all?

The Tipperary captain is candid in her assessment. She acknowledges that the AFLW offers a marvellous opportunity to would-be players, and she doesn’t hold it against any of her colleagues for taking up the offer of a contract. But she feels the LGFA’s strategy in relation to the AFLW needs tweaking. The game is being sapped of star talent, and as Curley sees it, the LGFA helping to create a shop window for Australian clubs, effectively publicising potential new recruits.

“You wouldn’t begrudge any of the girls for going,” Curley admitted.

“It’s a really good opportunity and you’d have to be delighted for them. On the other hand, then, what I can’t understand, is why the LGFA seem to be promoting it, promoting the AFLW. After all, we are losing a lot of our best players from the Championship when really, we should be trying to retain them.

“I’ll be honest, I don’t think the LGFA are looking after their players well enough, and it’s kind of no wonder they’re going to Australia where they’re going to be minded and looked after. So, I really don’t think you can begrudge girls for going, but if the LGFA are trying to keep the standard of football as high as possible, I think they need to do better for the players.”

COMMERCIAL CONSEQUENCES

The flight of top talent to Australia is an issue which is only going to spiral in terms of significance and controversy. The AFLW currently has plans to expand its season, which will have obvious implications for Irish players plying their trade down under.

As Curley notes, the ladies’ game is being drained of its best and most marketable players, which has serious commercial consequences in terms of the status and promotion of ladies’ football across the country. If the opportunity were to arise, would Curley herself consider taking up a contract with an Australian outfit? The Templemore physic won’t be drawn on the issue. She is Tipperary’s captain, and she’s completely invested in all things Tipperary and ladies’ football. The AFLW isn’t even a consideration at this point. As far as Curley is concerned, her future lies with Tipperary.

What precisely that future holds is, at this juncture, uncertain. Tipp play an entertaining and at times exotic brand of counter-attacking football, full of the off-the-ball running and quick diagonal movement. Under Creedon, they’ve evolved into a versatile team, capable of altering their game plan in response to whatever challenge is placed in front of them. Versatility, Curley feels, is essential in the modern game. To be successful requires a well-calibrated game plan or playing strategy, but it also necessitates a degree of flexibility in terms of how that game plan is executed - as Curley acknowledges.

“Look, each game is different,” Curley added.

“How you approach a game will depend on the opposition you’re up against - the quality of their forwards, the way they play. So, I think you have to be able to adjust your game slightly based on what the opposition is like, but our full focus at the moment is on Galway. “We’ll have to adjust certain things in the lead up to that game, we know that, but over the course of the last ten games we’ve been working on ourselves, working on our own gameplan. And we have trust in that plan, we have faith in it. And I think we have progressed a lot in the past year, and I do genuinely believe that we’re on an upward curve.”

Whether that upward curve carries enough momentum to take Tipperary past Galway or Cork remains to be seen. The Premier County may not be expected to advance from their group, but stranger things have happened in the world of ladies’ football. Teams can and do emerge out of nowhere, as Meath have demonstrated over the past two consecutive seasons.

A fully equipped Tipperary team, free from injury and absenteeism, is a force to be reckoned with. Tipp have the potential to mix it with the best in the business, and they will have to do exactly that over the next fortnight. Galway will be a stern test; Cork will be a different proposition altogether. But Curley believes Tipp can take them both on and believes her team can emerge from the group. Some will accuse her of being naive, but the Templemore woman knows that her side is stacked with potential. Perhaps that potential will blossom over the coming weeks.