'That's my job' - Hannah Tyrrell reflects on pressure free that helped Dublin secure All-Ireland LGFA final spot

Irish Examiner

3 days ago

TG4 LGFA All-Ireland semi-final: Dublin 3-14 Galway 2-14 (after extra-time)
They came into Saturday's semi-final double header with the best scoring rate of the four teams still standing, averaging over 27 points per game.
But once Caoimhe O'Connor went down injured after 27 minutes, Dublin's attack misfired completely.
Carla Rowe hit two points before being withdrawn, the rest of the starting forward line hit one from play between them, and as the contest went on, the twin aerial threat of Niamh Hetherton and Hannah Tyrrell up front was also managed well by Galway.
Between O'Connor's withdrawal and the last kick of normal time, Dublin added a mere three points. That made it all the more impressive that when Tyrrell was able to look past all that and draw deeply on her long track record of success across multiple codes to split the uprights and send the game to extra time.
'That's my job, that's my role, I'm the freetaker for a reason,' she said after her side's extra-time victory.
'I practice them day in day out, I felt confident that I could take it, and it was something I could contribute. I felt that things weren't going right for me personally so that was something I could fix. I didn't really think about (the pressure) at the time, I felt that I could score it and I did.
'It wasn't our best performance, we had to really dig deep. Galway put it up to us and it was tit-for-tat there and it felt like the first half of extra time we could pull away and then we got the goal. We hadn't really done ourselves justice so far, even in the 60 minutes today, but it feels like there's a lot more in us'.
Hannah Tyrrell scores her side's first goal, from a penalty. Pic: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile.
In extra-time, Dublin looked much more like the team that sat on top of the tree at the end of the 2023 campaign. They engineered three scores into the breeze in the first half of extra-time, then goals from Carla Rowe and Kate Sullivan ensured they had enough in the tank to withstand a late Galway rally.
Rowe, who was a late addition to the side, had been taken off and then came back on to find the net with an audacious heel flick to make it 2-13 to 0-14 at the start of the second period of overtime.
For the 12-year player with five All-Irelands, it was a first!
'Never in my life, I'd have said I'd pull a hamstring doing that!' she told FM104 radio afterwards.
'But it just came to me, the defender was coming across and I knew it needed to go in immediately, just pure luck!'
It was a score that will no doubt have gone down well in the accounts departments of the LGFA as well, as it means that Dublin and Meath – the two teams that usually draw the biggest crowds in the ladies game – will meet in the final on Sunday week.
'It's always a big game, all the people who came out behind us today, we could hear them and that spurred us on so we'll be hoping for them to come out to Croke Park in two weeks' time, and we know the Meath crowd will as well,' Rowe said.
In 2024, Galway came through a quarter-final clash with Dublin that also went to extra-time, but their season ended with a disappointing showing in the final.
Another agonising loss here makes it even more likely that their current golden generation, backboned by the Wards, Divillys and a handful of other veterans that have anything up to a decade of intercounty football behind them, might never get their hands on the Brendan Martin Cup.
'We may see some players step away after this season which is never easy to see, but a lot of those ladies have battled a long time for Galway, they've nothing else to give and nor should they,' admitted Galway manager Daniel Moynihan.
'We thought maybe we had it won in normal time. The last 30 seconds, one misplaced pass and essentially that's what's cost us. We didn't really get going in that extra-time until four or five minutes were left which isn't where you need to be,' said the Ballinasloe native.
'If anything, we were a little bit disappointed with our first half. We had a number of goal chances and didn't take them so we were a little bit disappointed to be level. I'm sure Dublin were probably very happy with they were.
'The second half was very scrappy, it was very difficult to get over but we felt that the two or three frees we knocked over in those closing stages might see us through, but luck wasn't on our side.
'They have a never-say-die attitude, another two minutes would have been key for us. We put them under the cosh, they couldn't get kickouts out and we possibly could have snuck another goal if we got another few minutes.
"But this is sport, it can be extremely cruel at times. Dublin will look back on last year and say that we've got our turn now, but this isn't going to go away in a long while for us'.
Scorers for Dublin: H Tyrrell (1-6, 0-5f, 1-0 pen), C Rowe (1-2), K Sullivan (1-1), N Hetherton (0-2), S Goldrick (0-1), O Nolan (0-1), S McIntyre (0-1).
Scorers for Galway: O Divilly (1-3), R Leonard (0-5, 0-4f), A Trill (1-1), E Noone (0-3, 0-1f), K Slevin (0-2, 0-1f).
DUBLIN: A Shiels; J Tobin, L Caffrey, N Crowley; M Byrne, N Donlon, H McGinnis; É O'Dowd, N Hetherton; C O'Connor, S Goldrick, N Owens; H Tyrrell, C Rowe, K Sullivan.
Subs: O Nolan for O'Connor (27), L Grendon for Rowe (39), S McIntyre for Owens (47), Rowe for Hetherton (52), Hetherton for McGinnis (full-time), A Kane for Byrne (73), H Leahy for Donlon (74), C Darby for Rowe (76), A Timothy for Sullivan (76).
GALWAY: D Gower; K Geraghty, C Trill, B Quinn; H Noone, N Ward, A Molloy; L Ward, S Divilly; N Divilly, O Divilly, A Davoren; E Noone, R Leonard, K Slevin.
Subs: L Noone for N Divilly (half-time), K Thompson for Leonard (41), L Coen for Davoren (50), A Trill for Slevin (57), M Glynn for S Divilly (70), M Banek for Quinn (h-t in e-t), Davoren for Coen (h-t in e-t), Slevin for L Noone (h-t in e-t), C Cooney for Molloy (75), S Lynch for Banek (77).
Referee: Seamus Mulvihill (Kerry).