“Niamh Dobbs was our motivation but we didn’t want to dwell on it either"

It was a fairytale ending for Fenagh last Saturday when they bridged a five year gap to claim the Ladies Intermediate Football Championship for the first time since 2020 by beating Kildavin/Clonegal 1-8 to 106 in a closely fought contest.

Perhaps more importantly though was that they won it just a week after the death of Niamh Dobbs. The Fenagh born woman was such a huge presence in the world of Ladies Football, and whilst her achievements on the pitch are famed, it’s her achievements off the pitch that are perhaps more important. 

She was instrumental in setting up St. Fortchens, she was involved as a selector for the Carlow Ladies Football team for a period, she was a fantastic coach and mentor, coaching underage county teams for years. In 2021, she took part in an inaugural ‘Leading Provincial Females Programme’, a programme designed for ladies over the age of 18 who are interested in developing personally or leading teams through their roles in the LGFA or the GAA. She was also Carlow’s Leinster Delegate. In fact, there was a minute's silence before this game for her.

So naturally, her death would have served as motivation for Fenagh to go on and win this, in her memory. Manager, PJ Byrne was emotional afterwards and said that naturally she served as motivation but that it was important that they didn’t let the emotions get the better of them. 

“Niamh was a leader, she always said that the older players were there to encourage and we asked our players to do the same. During the moments silence though we said take ten seconds to remember our loved ones and then to take the final 50 seconds to remember what Niamh would ask you to do, and Niamh would ask us to go to war and that’s what we were doing in memory of Niamh. It was motivation but we didn’t dwell on it too much, we all knew Niamh and we all knew that what Niamh wanted to do was think in the moment and stay in the moment we were in.” 

“That’s what she would have asked us to do, not to be thinking about her while we were on the field, but think about her before the game, and after that draw a line under it, then go out and play the way Niamh would play. Niamh would always say stick your head in where nobody would ask you to put your a**e. That’s what she would ask us to do and that’s what we did today. She was as equally as good a footballer as anybody who would play in the club. Jenny O’Neill was another girl from the same era and we lost Jenny too so we were remembering the two of them, it was very very important.” 

On the win itself, Byrne said it meant a lot to the club. 

“It’s great, we were underdogs, we got well beaten by a good Kildavin team earlier in the Championship. We knew it was going to be a battle, Kildavin are a really good team. Beating Kildavin is incredible for us, and let some of it be in memory of Niamh. It showed a little bit of the character of the girls [to fight back]. We had talked about the fact that things will go wrong for us. The moment that did it for us was Kildavin scoring a goal and we came down the field and responded immediately and we just kept chasing it and chasing it. The time to catch a team is just after they’ve scored a goal. There is a little bit of weakness in a team when they score a goal, and that’s the time to counteract and get your goal.” 

He praised the attitude of his team.

“We have some wonderful players out there, Sarah got the Player of the Match but it could have been anybody. Rebecca Sheehan scored a goal and a point. This year was the first time she played Football. It’s a fairytale ending, we got beaten by 15 points by Kildavin in the first round. It’s a long long time [since they won back in 2020], four years ago we were struggling to get a team together, so a lot of work has gone in since then. There’s a few players still on the team from back then.”