Jackie Horgan encouraged about Kerry's improvement

By Daragh Ó Conchúir

Given the rat-tat-tat nature of most of the Glen Dimplex All-Ireland Camogie Championships, with group games on consecutive weekends prior to the knockout stages, a month between the semi-final of the intermediate competition and Sunday’s final, involving Kerry and Offaly (3pm, live on RTÉ2), must feel like an eternity.

Jackie Horgan has pretty much seen it all during a Kerry camogie journey that would make a Hollywood scriptwriter redden with embarrassment, had he penned something so far-fetched.

Year after year, despite drawing from a tiny sub-section of what is a very small hurling region in a county that has just secured its 39th All-Ireland senior football crown, the camogs have raised standards with both Clanmaurice and the Kingdom, posting improbable victories and gathering a plethora of All-Ireland medals along the way.

Though only 27, Horgan is a veteran of this odyssey and there aren’t many challenges she and her cohorts haven’t encountered. Heck, Clanmaurice, until very recently the only adult club in the county, had to play an All-Ireland semi-final with 14 players just four years ago. They won.

That was in junior but they will ply their trade at senior level later this year, after supplementing their two successes in the third tier with a second straight intermediate triumph last December.

Now, in the green and gold, they are an hour away from the same exalted status, having won the junior in 2019. But even for such experienced operators, managing the time since the thrilling semi-final defeat of Down has not been easy.

“Four weeks is a long gap,” admits Horgan. “It’s more the mind than the body. You can train away but it’s trying not to think about it too much until the days before the game. But there’s nowhere else you want to be coming into August like, so we’ll manage it.”

The development of camogie in the south-west corner of this island has been staggering.

“Years ago, when I first started playing, and when we left minor, Clanmaurice was the only option. There was nothing in the county really. There was underage, but that was it really. The work that has been done over the past few years is unbelievable. This year even, there’s a club after being set up below in Kenmare.

“And obviously the success feeds into all that. I’m actually teaching in Causeway, which would be a natural camogie and hurling area, and the numbers playing down there is huge. When I was in school, there was none of that.

“In the hurling side of things it is getting bigger. You have Parnells, Crokes and Kenmare/Kilgarvan – they’re spread around the county more. Camogie-wise, it was always North Kerry but again, we have clubs coming from the other side of Killarney playing camogie. With Clanmaurice, you’ve Danielle O’Leary from Rathmore, so it is slowly but surely getting around the county.”

Crotta was Horgan’s local hurling club growing up but in her formative years, it was the big ball that was her focus.

“We’re at the Listowel side of North Kerry so we’d be all football. I actually didn’t start playing camogie with a club until I was 15. Jerome O’Sullivan used to come at primary school so I used to play a bit there but I joined (underage club) Cillard when I was 15 or 16, and I probably am more camogie than football now.”

Little would you have imagined then that she would become such a scoring threat for club and county, at Croke Park and a host of other venues around the land, proving an adept freetaker too in support of the legendary Patrice Diggin, who she shares captaincy duties with this season.

Certainly, as she scored a stunning goal within two minutes of Diggin planting a penalty to help Kerry establish the vital breathing space that enabled them to eke out a four-point triumph over Down, you would have presumed a hurley was thrust in her hand in the pram.

That wasn’t the case but Horgan is clearly a quick learner.

“I remember coming home from my first training session and thinking, ‘Ohhhh.’ I loved it but I was thinking, ‘Am I mad?’ The following year, myself and Aoife Behan broke into the senior and we played a (Nancy Murray Cup) final against Carlow in Templetouhy and we got annihilated, and I remember thinking maybe I should stick to football but as time went on, we couldn’t even think about the success we’ve had since.”

The core of the group from a decade ago remains, winning the old Division 4, 3 and 2 titles in the National League as well as the aforementioned All-Irelands. But thanks to this success, there is a depth to the squad that never existed before.

“We were just very lucky with the group we got, that they stuck it out. To keep the bulk of that team - I actually, I went through it. I think nine of the starting 15 from that 2015 (final) are still playing, which really does drive it on.

“The younger girls don’t probably realise where we were, once upon a time. We really were the bottom of the barrel. When you’ve been there the whole way through, it is special.

“ I suppose the difference with where we were now and ten years ago, if we scored ten points in the game, Patrice probably scored the ten, whereas the past few years, your six forwards might score in the game.

“Last year, Ruth (O’Connor), Róisín (Quinn) and Shannon (Collins) broke into the team. They had done a bit of training the year before when they weren’t up to the age group, which was obviously a huge benefit to them. The three of them girls started the semi-final and they had only just done the Leaving Cert. They have been a massive plus.

“For a few years there, you know, we just didn’t have the numbers. There was nothing you could do about it. I suppose there was a bit more comfort and not as much pressure on you whereas now, in training, there’s five or six girls there on the fringes, and they’re pushing it. To have three girls starting in their first year senior is huge.

“So that’s a major difference, the girls coming through.”

This is a significant accomplishment, ever before a game is played but the big picture is one thing. You’re in a final, you want to win it. Particularly, when the carrot is a crack at the Corks and Galways of this world.

Offaly represent stern opposition. They took out Antrim in the other semi-final, meaning the finalists had beaten the two teams relegated from senior to secure their positions in Sunday’s Corke Park carnival.

“They’re a super team. I suppose, if you were to take one team out at the start of the year of who would get a chance to get into a final, Offaly would probably be your first pick. We played them up in Birr in February in the first round of the league and they were even going well then.

“But we’re there. And the past couple of weekends the way the games have gone, no-one has been able to predict them so we’ll give it our all and whatever happens on the day will happen. We’re gone one step further than last year, so that was the aim. We’ll see after that.”