Leen keen to get back playing in 2020

Niamh Leen realised her dream when she captained Kerry to All-Ireland camogie success last year. But the Causeway woman has lots more she wants to achieve, she told Dan Kearney

WHEN the final whistle sounded on the 2019 All-Ireland Premier Junior Camogie final, Kerry captain Niamh Leen sank to her knees as the reality of what her side had achieved began to hit home.

It had been a long 12 months for Leen and her Kerry comrades as the mental scars of a chastening 1-12 to 0-6 defeat to Dublin at the same stage in 2018 had been slow to heal. They vowed to each other in the dressing room after that defeat that they would be back, and they were true to their word as they claimed the Kathleen Mills Cup with a 0-11 to 0-8 victory over Limerick in 2019.

The 2018 final had been particularly tough for Leen. Playing at full back, she had a fine game, but a slip in the 15th minute allowed her direct opponent Aoife Bugler to get through for a goal, and it was a moment that hurt Leen for a long time afterwards, as she recalled.

“That All-Ireland really hit me harder than most of the girls because I know that I slipped in the first 15 minutes and the full forward got in and got a goal. It absolutely knocked my confidence,” she said. “I have tried to build it back up and thankfully I’ve been taken out of full back for the last year, so it has helped me a bit.

“I definitely prefer playing out field. I felt very isolated inside at full back, I just hated it. Aoife Fitzgerald, who now plays in goals, was Kerry’s regular full back, but she left to go to Australia, and I went from centre half back to full back. I was there for about four years.

“Then, if I was played out field for a challenge match or something, I felt like I didn’t have the stamina to play out there, so that was annoying me as well. I was like, ‘I’m definitely stuck here’, but thankfully Ian played me at full back for the first three games of the league last year but then he brought me out and I was absolutely delighted with myself at wing back!”

Kerry had new management for 2019, and former Kilmoyley and Kerry hurler Ian Brick was entrusted with the task of getting Kerry into another All-Ireland final. Leen says that Brick gave a new freshness to the Kerry set-up, although she is thankful to those that came before him.

“Stephen Goggin, Anthony O’Brien and Anthony Fealey did great work with us. They got us to an All-Ireland semi-final and to an All-Ireland final, but maybe it was the fresh voice that pushed us over the line. I think that no matter who was over us, to be totally honest, within ourselves we were gunning to get over the line.

“Ian was a breath of fresh air, he’s so positive and he brought a whole new level of enthusiasm and freshness that we probably needed. That’s no disrespect to the (previous) lads, they did great work with us over the last number of years.”

After a solid league campaign, Kerry’s road to redemption in 2019 began in earnest with a 0-11 to 0-4 win over Offaly on July 13, and a 1-16 to 0-1 dismantling of Waterford a week later. Wicklow conceded the next game, and Kerry were safely through to an

All-Ireland semi-final against Clare. Seven points from Patrice Diggin, and a haul of 1-4 for Julie Anne O’Keeffe, saw Kerry triumph by 1-13 to 0-6, and again the Kingdom found themselves preparing for a shot at the All-Ireland final.

Leen had been made captain by Brick at the start of the season, and although she was still only 21 years of age, the added responsibility didn’t really phase her. It helped that she had always been a very vocal member of the team and was a natural leader out on the field. She wasn’t a player that really suffered from nerves of any sort, but something was different when she stepped out on Croke Park in 2019.

“It was funny because on the morning of the All-Ireland final I wasn’t that nervous. Then I realised that in 60 minutes I could be walking up the steps or I could be crying again. That’s what was going through my head,” she recalls.

“It was like as the game was progressing, I was getting more and more nervous, which was weird. I think that I just saw the time ticking up and up, and it was getting closer, and I was thinking that we could win.

“I was wing back and Michelle Costello was the other wing back on the day. She was marking one of Limerick’s best players, Rebecca Noonan, so I suppose a lot of the ball was going to that wing. The more that you get the ball, the more that you settle yourself into the game. I was starved of ball in the first half and I couldn’t settle. I went into the dressing room at half time and I honestly thought that I was going to puke. I was still so nervous; the nerves weren’t gone.

“In the second half we drove on. We were the better team, but we only won by three points, which was mad. (Kerry hit fourteen painful wides on the day).

“I would be very good friends with Niamh Hanniffy of Galway, and Aoife Keane of Clare, and they would always say to me ‘don’t let the fear of losing stop you from winning’, and it was something that stuck in my head that day. It’s very hard though when you’re not used to that situation. Thankfully we had the experience against Dublin the year before, and that definitely stood to us.

“I reckon that Limerick were a little more nervous than we were, and they were probably getting more caught up in the emotion of the day, like we were the previous year against Dublin. We were afraid of losing though. We couldn’t go through that heartbreak again.

“The celebrations after we won were the best couple of weeks of my life. I remember when the final whistle went, and I just dropped to the ground. I honestly couldn’t believe it. They had one last ball in, a free, and thankfully it went wide, but we were only three points up and it’s a very dangerous lead to have, so when the final whistle went I remember just dropping to my knees and being so grateful that we had gotten over the line.

“Then I remember that there was a fellow from Croke Park following me around while I was hugging all the girls to try and get me up the steps. I looked at the steps and was thinking,’ I can’t believe I’m climbing these as captain’. I was like, this is so surreal. When I think back now, it was like I just blinked, and it was all over.

“I had all of my family there, my Nan was above in the stand and it was lovely to run up to her with the cup afterwards. We’re a very close-knit group like so I’d know all the girls’ parents, their families, friends, boyfriends and girlfriends, so like you’d know everyone like. It was so nice.

“The celebrations continued for a while after that and then we had the club success as well. (Clanmaurice captured the All-Ireland Junior Club title after a replay win over Raharney of Westmeath that December). It was a dream that you just weren’t waking up from, unreal,” she says.

NIAMH Leen’s journey to captaining Kerry to their first ever All-Ireland camogie championship began in her home club of Causeway, where she played with the boys team up to the age of 12, along with her buddy, Sara Murphy. The Clanmaurice camogie club was formed when she was ten, so she doubled up with both teams for a couple of years. There was plenty of games for the girls, although they had a bit of travelling to do, and Niamh soon began to make steady progress with her own game.

“I remember different blitzes in Cork and Limerick. We were always on the road. There seemed to be loads of blitzes every weekend. When I was twelve, I was picked for the Kerry under-14 panel and they were just after winning the Féile All-Ireland in 2008. Then we went to Laois and won our second All-Ireland. They won Division 4 in 2008 and we won Division 3 in 2009. From there on I think that it really got going. Most of the girls that are playing with me now were playing back then as well. A lot of them anyway.

“My first year playing minor, I was 14. We got to the All-Ireland final that year against Down but we lost. I think Richard Keane was over us. A year later we lost in the semi-final by a goal to Armagh. That was our biggest loss I suppose really. We were heartbroken after that. We got to semi-finals at U-16 level with my own age group. We always seemed to get to a semi-final or a final, but never really got over the line. My first All-Ireland win was the Féile and I didn’t win another one again until last year.”

With so much travelling going on, Niamh was lucky that she grew up in a sport mad household.

“We’d be a big GAA family. I grew up going to Kerry football matches, Kerry hurling matches, going into the county championship, everything. No matter if Causeway were playing or not, we were inside in Austin Stack Park watching the County Championship, watching all the games. There wasn’t an evening that we weren’t at some match. I don’t know how mom and dad kept us on the road, but they did.

“My sister (Ann Marie, a Clanmaurice and Kerry team mate) started playing when camogie started. She had never played with the boys. My brother (David) had played hurling from a young age, but he was riddled with injury, so he gave it up when he moved to Cork.”

After completing her Leaving Cert, Niamh was accepted into the University of Limerick. The GAA fields of UL soon came calling to her, and she made the Ashbourne Cup camogie panel in her first year. Something didn’t feel quite right for her though, and confidence issues saw her pulling out of the panel after a few short months.

“Patrice (Diggin) was on it as well. I gave it up that Christmas though. I kind of felt completely out of my depth to be totally honest. I felt ‘I shouldn’t be here’, kind of thing. It was nothing to do with the players or the management because they couldn’t be nicer, and I’m still best friends with some of the girls that I met from UL camogie. I just felt that I wasn’t good enough to be there.

“In second year I was going out on placement, so I didn’t even bother trying to get on the panel. In third year, that was the first year that we got to the club All-Ireland final (with Clanmaurice), so I hadn’t been training with UL, but I was brought on to the panel. I started training then when the club stopped in December, so I won an Ashbourne Cup medal.

“When I look back, I suppose I didn’t really give it my best shot when I think about it. That was down to myself, I just didn’t feel that I should have been in there. It was a lack of confidence in myself to be honest. They knew that just because you are from Kerry doesn’t mean that you can’t play, they had seen Patrice and Sara (Murphy), after all. Patrice had even captained the team and got player of the match in one of the finals.

“I didn’t back myself enough to actually go for it, I just felt that these girls are coming from counties like Tipperary, Clare and Galway and playing at senior level so I just felt that there was no way that I could compete with that. If I went back now, I’d give it a good shot. I’d battle hard with them, but I didn’t even give myself that opportunity I think really.”

LEEN spent a year working as a science teacher at St Joseph’s Secondary School in Ballybunion and really enjoyed her time there, despite the challenges that Covid-19 presented. Work, and camogie training, has continued remotely with Zoom sessions throughout the lockdown.

With the majority of running done on the road, team physio Erin Sheehan has increased the team’s mobility sessions to twice a week, whilst Ian Brick has also taken online sessions with them. The acceleration of the GAA’s Covid-19 return to play roadmap means that clubs can go back training as of today (Wednesday), although a return to games play could still be a bit away for Clanmaurice.

“Everyone’s eager now to get back to proper training even though the unfortunate thing is that we don’t have a club scene, so we actually won’t be back playing until October. We used to play in the Limerick League and had great success, but then we were sort of thrown out,” she laughed.

“I’m not really sure of the ins and outs of it, but I think that they didn’t like us going up there and winning, I don’t know really. We went into the Munster Championship every year as the Kerry champions without ever having played a championship at home. It was tough because our first game was always the Munster semi-final, but thankfully we were able to manage it.

“We won five out of six Munster club titles in the last six years so we’ve a lot achieved. There was only one year that we didn’t make the Munster final and we were riddled with injuries that year.”

So, what does the future hold for Niamh Leen and Kerry camogie?

“The dream is to get up to senior level and to get a chance to compete for the O’Duffy Cup. It will be a long time coming, but we’ll see how we get on in the Intermediate this year. We’re still quite young, the majority of our team are still twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, and younger.

“We have six underage clubs in the county and once we keep progressing the future is really bright. To see the talent coming through is great and I hope that girls keep it up because between the ages of fourteen and nineteen you lose a lot of girls.

“I can’t wait to be at a pitch again. It’s not even the training, it’s just the craic that you have. If girls stay playing, they won’t regret it.

“The likes of Amy O’Sullivan from Crotta, she’s phenomenal and plays with Cillard, a huge talent to watch. Once she starts coming up and Ellen O’Donoghue from Causeway, and Emma Conway, I just think once they start coming up, by that stage we’ll be twenty-eight or twenty-nine and in our prime and it could be very exciting. I can definitely see us winning the Intermediate. I’d be very hopeful.”