"Every time you win a game, it makes that self-belief even stronger"

“It gives me goose-bumps,” said Roisin Bailey.

This was the reaction of the St Anne’s player when she was reminded she was captain of a Carlow team who were playing in an All-Ireland football final in Croke Park on Sunday. It is her second year in the position. She remembers well when she was asked to do the job.

“Last year when I was asked to be captain it was such an honour. The year didn’t really go the way we wanted. This year coming in, Ed (Burke) asked me to be captain again,” Bailey recalled.

“I felt straight away with the group of girls who had come back in, I felt it was going to be a special year. I suppose that feeling has been growing ever since and to say you are captain of a team that is so special is unbelievable,” Roisin concedes.

“It is not just me. There are 28 leaders in that dressing room and such a great management team, it makes my job very easy. I am just the lucky one to get that title at the moment.” 

Carlow have played and won seventeen games so far this season. They have league and Leinster championship silverware to show for their efforts. The squad is buzzing according to their captain.

“Such a happy camp. I suppose winning and everything we have done this year has brought us closer together as a team. Every time you win a game, it makes that self-belief even stronger.” 

They say even good teams can lose their way for any number of reasons. This has not happened with this Carlow team. There is a strong symbiotic relation between the players and the background team. Each feeds off the other.

“There has not been a negative word spoken all year. We are so lucky with the girls who are in there,” agrees Bailey.

“Nothing we do is a problem. Anything we are asked to do is not a problem. Anything we have asked of the management team is not an issue and it is the same for the County Board. We are very lucky that we have that environment.

I suppose it is an environment we have created ourselves and management have created. It is really positive.” 

Then there is those players who haven’t made the starting fifteen. They have put their disappointment to one side and have got behind those players who start. The second choice goalkeeper is a case in point. She cheers everything good on the pitch and when it doesn’t go well she encourages.

“Shannen (Cotter) is just one example,” agrees Bailey. 

“They slog through the exact same (training sessions) as the girls who are getting game time. That is not to say those girls are not disappointed and they have to be disappointed they are not getting game-time out on the pitch but it is a testament to them that they keep coming and driving the thing on.” 

Bennekerry-Tinryland and Old Leighlin have been the leading senior clubs in the county for so many years now. They carve out titles between each other. In such cases players from those clubs can bring a sense of superiority into the camp. Not here though.

“It is something we spoke about. When you come into a county set-up you are very proud to represent your club. Yet the club does have to go out the window somewhere. You have to think you are not playing for St Annes now. I am not playing for Bennekerry-Tinryland now. I am not playing for Old Leighlin now. I am playing with a Carlow jersey on my back,” the captain reasons.

According to Bailey, the trip to London in the All-Ireland championship brought the players even closer together.

“We are so lucky to have got that opportunity. The difference after that in the group and what a weekend away can do for the group. It bonded and gelled us together even more.” 

So now, as a unit Carlow are Croke Park bound. History beckons.

“When you have a group of 28 girls with the same goal and that goal at the start of the year was getting to Croke Park and winning in Croke Park, that is the next step on the journey. We were always going to bond the way we have bonded.”