Kate Geraghty and Galway taking inspiration from Kilkerrin-Clonberne

​By Paul Keane

It's seven years since a club other than Galway's Kilkerrin-Clonberne won the AIB All-Ireland ladies SFC title.

For the record, it was Cork's Mourneabbey that won that one in 2019, moving mountains to defeat, of course, Kilkerrin-Clonberne with a late, late point in the final.

There was no All-Ireland winner in 2020 due to the pandemic but in each of the five seasons since, from 2021 through to 2025, Kilkerrin-Clonberne have come out on top.

It's a generational group of players who have defeated teams from Ulster, Leinster and Munster in those five finals to underline their status as one of the greatest ever ladies club teams. Perhaps even the greatest.

Meanwhile, at county level, Galway's quest for All-Ireland success goes on, their last title coming in 2004. On Sunday, their flagship football team will take on Kerry in the TG4 All-Ireland final at Croke Park, the site of Kilkerrin-Clonberne's last four final wins.

Surely it has to count for something that the Galway team is stuffed with talented Kilkerrin-Clonberne players, six of whom started for Galway in the TG4 All-Ireland semi-final defeat of Armagh.

"I suppose we'd probably be down to 15 or so without them, so they do have a huge impact!" said Galway ladies captain Kate Geraghty, pointing to the sheer size of the Kilkerrin-Clonberne cohort on the county panel.

"There's three sets of sisters, or is it four even, so without them all we would be a very different team and I think the bond they have as well makes a huge difference.

"They know each other inside out and I think the fact that we've all been playing alongside them now for the last couple of years makes a difference because we know how they play as well."

What they all have in common, the Kilkerrin-Clonberne players with bulging medal collections and the rest of the Galway contingent, is that they've yet to experience an All-Ireland win in the maroon jersey.

"They've put in so much work for the last couple of years in terms of getting their club to All-Ireland finals," said defender Geraghty. "They've won club All-Irelands, and I know that they'll probably keep going to try to win more, but they don't have a county All-Ireland and that is probably one of their biggest aims now. Hopefully we'll be able to get over the line on Sunday."

Galway have done a pretty good impression of the Kilkerrin-Clonberne team so far this season, steamrolling all opposition and marching confidently to within an hour of the big prize.

Rewind back to April and the Tribeswomen coughed up a five-point half-time lead in a low scoring Lidl National Football League Division 1 decider to lose to Cork.

They've come roaring back since then, retaining the Connacht title and powering through the All-Ireland series with a number of big wins.

Galway have won all four of their games in the All-Ireland series by double-digit margins, averaging out at 27 points per game in wins over Meath, Tyrone, Mayo and Armagh.

Geraghty reckons that being mugged by Cork, who struck two late goals in the League final, actually stood to the group.

"The last 10 minutes of that game, we just didn't have enough control," she said. "We've worked on that at training, if you have to mind the ball, or if you have to get a point in the last couple of minutes, it's just not to get so panicky at the end of the game. We probably just lacked a bit of control at the end of that game."

Which is why Geraghty reckons it may have been a useful lesson to learn early in the year.

"Yeah, it probably would have been plain sailing otherwise, we would have thought we were better than we were if we had won that game," she said.

"You learn a lot more from a loss sometimes. You'd prefer to lose a League final at the end of the day than an All-Ireland final. You don't want to be losing a League final, of course, but I'd prefer it to happen the way it did."

Geraghty has been terrific at the back during their march to a second All-Ireland final in three seasons. They have coughed up just 10.5 points per game on average and have been scoring for fun at the other end.

They will be some people's favourites to lift the Brendan Martin Cup though Geraghty's opinion is that Kerry, two years on from beating Galway in the final, will be expected to win again.

If Galway can seize the underdogs tag, like the Mayo men did last weekend against Kerry in the Sam Maguire Cup decider, it could be helpful.

"I think they were huge underdogs," said Geraghty of Mayo. "Nobody really backed them at all. The work rate they put in was just phenomenal.

"Like Andy Moran said, nobody believed they could do it and they did. People probably think we're a bit of underdogs as well at the minute. I don't really read into it too much whether we are or we aren't. I think it's just about your team and how you work to get there, and the work rate you put in on the day."