Hannah Tyrrell and Nicole Owens hang up boots after glittering careers with Dublin

Irish Examiner

2 days ago

And just like that they were gone, three of the very best to have ever played ladies football.
Hannah Tyrrell pulled the curtains down on a relatively brief, but spectacular, Dublin senior ladies career after clinching her second winner's medal at Croke Park.
Five points from the 34-year-old former rugby international propelled her to the top of the Championship's scoring stakes and, more importantly, her county to a seventh All-Ireland.
A fitting stage to call it quits and to end her love affair with elite sport having previously excelled as a soccer player and, most notably, in the oval ball game.
The knee injury that left her crumpled in agony on the Croke Park pitch late on here wasn't a particularly pleasant ending to it all.
That could yet be a serious setback though, true to the sheer determination of a genuine ladies football icon, Tyrrell insisted on walking off the pitch.
"I was determined to walk off on my own two feet, if it was going to be my last time in Croke Park," she smiled afterwards.
She had daughter Aoife in her arms while she was speaking to RTÉ TV.
"How lucky am I?" she said. "I've been lucky enough to be from Dublin, to play for Dublin, to finish my career in Croke Park and to go out on a high."
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Nicole Owens called it quits on the grandest stage of all too, bowing out after capturing her fifth All-Ireland medal.
The 32-year-old has been plagued by ACL injuries throughout her career but will still go down as one of the greats, like Tyrrell.
And when the story of the 2025 final is told in years to come, they will reflect on Owens' sixth minute goal as being the game's decisive score. Even at that early stage, it was hard to see a way back for Meath who were already five points behind.
Owens rans herself into the ground before being taken off to a chorus of approval from the Dublin supporters in the near 50,000 crowd.
She didn't mention retirement in the main post-match press conference, focusing mainly on how difficult it had been to get herself back into the sort of shape to swing an All-Ireland final Dublin's way, as she did.
"I was on the fence about coming back or not this year," she revealed. "I think I was in a bad way starting the year. I would have chatted to Paul Casey and Derek Murray, the management, I was in a really bad way at the start of this year, and they just kind of put an arm around me and got me back in."
Later on, in a separate interview with Jerome Quinn on the Croke Park pitch, Owens officially called it quits.
"That is me done," she said. "I made the decision, win or lose, because I knew that if we didn't get over the line, it would be a hard decision to make. I think the big thing for me today was just to come in and have fun. I did, I enjoyed the crowd. I enjoyed the first-half, not so much the second-half but the first-half I enjoyed."
There could yet be more to follow Tyrrell and Owens into retirement. Sinead Goldrick is 35 and a five-time senior All-Ireland medallist too while Martha Byrne, who has six medals now, along with Leah Caffrey and Orlagh Nolan are all 31.
If they do leave, it would probably be more to do with mileage and having given so much over such a long period of time because all three are still at the peak of their powers.
Nolan was Player of the Match. Caffrey and Byrne locked down Dublin's defence expertly, holding a Meath attack that contained Emma Duggan, Vikki Wall and rising stars like Kerrie Cole and Ciara Smyth to just three points from open play. Meath defender Aoibhin Cleary got Meath's other point from play.
The third player we spoke of who may very well have played their last inter-county game was Meath's powerful forward Wall.
If Meath were to win this All-Ireland, they needed the Dunboyne colossus to have a big game and while she emptied the tank, not a lot worked out for her.
She kicked three wides including an early goal chance that needed to go in if her team was to avoid a fourth consecutive loss to Dublin this year.
In the coming days, Wall will leave Ireland for Australia to resume duties with AFLW Premiership holders North Melbourne. Wall signed a three-year deal with the club earlier this year and, at 27, there are clearly no guarantees that she will be back. If the Kangaroos insist on her being a full-time player for them, that could very well be that.
If it was her last game in green, the defeat and the frustration she clearly felt over a number of decisions, like Gus Chapman's insistence on pulling the ball back for a free to Meath in the second-half instead of playing advantage when they were chasing a goal, won't affect her legacy.
She has done everything in the game, powering Meath to All-Ireland senior wins in 2021 and 2022, as well as intermediate success prior to that. She has been an All-Star and a Player of the Year and dragged her club Dunboyne from the junior to the senior ranks.
Her sister, Sarah, was on Meath's team too and at one stage they collided while trying to gain possession. Vikki came off the worst but directed referee Chapman to keep the game going before falling down on her hunkers, clearly winded. That's the spirit she always displayed in green and that the Royal County's supporters will remember if this was her swansong.