Bailey keen to savour the Croke Park experience with Carlow

​By Paul Keane

Back in late March at Croke Park, the Carlow men's footballers capped a highly productive spring by capturing the Allianz Football League Division 4 title.

They beat Longford in the final and, in doing so, secured what was the county's first piece of silverware in either the League or Championship in over 80 years, since 1944 in fact.

Four months on, their female counterparts have made their own little piece of history just by making it to Croke Park.

Nobody is daring to suggest that they can't finish the job and beat Antrim in Sunday's TG4 All-Ireland ladies junior football final, presenting captain Róisín Bailey with the opportunity to lift the silverware, but simply getting this far is genuinely an achievement in itself.

"I've used the word excited so many times, but it's the truth!" said Bailey, eyeing the national decider. "It's massive to be here as a Carlow woman and to get this opportunity. It's the first time that us as a group, or any Carlow ladies football team, have got to this stage. To be the first team to do that is massive."

In the other corner on Sunday, the saffron coloured one, will be Antrim. And they are a group of players only too familiar with Croke Park. Antrim came up short to Louth in last year's junior final. This will be the county's fifth final at the grade in only a decade. And several of their players were involved with the St Ergnat's Moneyglass team that contested last December's AIB All-Ireland club senior final at GAA HQ.

"Yeah, exactly," said Bailey, acknowledging the scale of the challenge. "I suppose we have to embrace the occasion and we have to recognise the fact that it is an achievement in itself to have got to where we've gotten. But there's 60 minutes of football to be played as well and we want to go out and play our best football out there.

"We're happy to be here but, like I keep saying, we want to get the job done as well. I think it's going to be a great game. I think we're probably two evenly matched teams, and hopefully that will show on Sunday.

"Antrim have that hurt from last year and they have the experience that we don't have, so I suppose, yeah, that's maybe a little bit that they have over us, but I think each of us are fighting for something different.

"They're coming with that heartbreak from last year, we're coming with an opportunity to do something that we've never done before, so I think they balance each other out. I suppose it's going to be down to who can show they want it a little bit more on the day."

Wins over Limerick, Sligo, London and then Derry propelled Carlow through to the final, having earlier won the Division 4 title in the League, and Bailey is eager to push on and to reach even higher levels of performance.

"We've probably been knocking on the door of putting together a really good 60-minute performance all year," she said. "So hopefully Croke Park is the place that we can do that.

"We said at the start of the year, if we could get into the habit of winning it would be really important. Then hopefully we'd find a way to maintain the habit and keep it going. I've spoken about the talent in the dressing-room, but the talent has been there for so many years.

"We were just waiting for the time for it to click and kind of come together. And thankfully it has done this year."

It's the midfielder's fifth year on the panel and she has assumed a central role. Getting her hands on two pieces of silverware would amount to a dream year.

"I've been trying for the last five years to win these things but there are girls that have been there trying for 10 years, and the likes of Edel Hayden has been trying for 25 years," said Bailey, who has been blown away by the support from around the county.

"I know there's a huge crowd coming from Carlow. I was in my own club on Tuesday night, just at the U-8s training, and they had their signs and their posters and they were all so excited. There's two buses coming from my club, and I know most clubs are the same.

"To have that support will be huge, and I'm sure we'll need it. No doubt it'll be daunting standing out there on Sunday morning, but having that support and that kind of familiarity of maybe being able to pick out a voice in the big crowd will be huge for us."