Trisha is hoping to be the fifth Na Déise player to collect a medal in Croke Park.

When Waterford run onto Croke Park on Sunday afternoon next in the All-Ireland Intermediate Ladies Football Final against Armagh running onto the field with them, most likely as a sub will be Na Déise Ladies Football Club Member Trisha Kiely.

20 year old Trisha is no stranger to playing football. She has been doing so since she was a very young age and says that her father Declan who played for many years with the Sliabh gCua/Saint Mary’s Club had her kicking a football in the garden from almost the day she was born.

Trisha began playing organised football from a young age. In late spring/early summer of 1998, as a senior infants pupil at Saint Mary’s Touraneena National School, each day when the older girls including her two older sisters Deirdra and Sinead were training for a school league final, Trisha would hang around with them, watching them play football and often filled in when someone was missing to make up numbers for a game.

All of the older players in the group were in agreement in the days leading up to the final that Trisha should be added to the group and would be given a jersey on the day of the final against Ballyduff Upper.

On the day of the final the Touraneena girls were beaten by a better Ballyduff side, and after the game the players were naturally disappointed. They knew that they had put in a terrific effort in preparing but on the day their best was not to prove enough.

After the game, naturally there was some tears, but these quickly dried up when the Cumann na mBunscol officials in the presentation area of the Stand in Fraher Field called the team up, Trisha lead them up the steps and was the first to get a medal, and has no hesitation in telling anyone that she was only in Senior Infants while standing beside a microphone that was switched on.

Like all the rest of the panel, Trisha is appealing for people not just from the Touraneena and Modeligo areas where she plays her football, but right across the county to get to Croke Park on Sunday.

“I think it's very important for as many people to go to Croke Park on Sunday as possible” Trisha says. “I would hope that plenty of locals will drive up for the occasion. So far i know that there is a bus going from my secondary school, Ard Scoil Na nDeise, members from my club team Na Déise, family and friends”. Trisha like the rest of her team colleagues travelling to Dublin says that “the whole County should be out to cheer us on as we are the only Waterford Team to reach an All Ireland this year”. 

Trisha joined the panel in January of this year. She learned of her inclusion in the panel through Johnny Landers, who told her that the manager Pat O’Brien wanted to see her in training. Since then she has not looked back, taking in all that has been told to her by the more senior members of the panel.

On her first night with the panel at the Community Centre in Ballymacarbry, she literally had to be pushed in the doors of the building. However once she got in and spotted another local girl Aoife Landers from Knockboy, as well as Shannon Dunford she was grand. She did not know many of the other players but quickly got to know them. She says the craic within the panel is brilliant and rates duel star Shona Curran as the “class clown”. (She’s some person if she beats Trisha T.K.)

Ahead of Sunday’s final, Trisha has been taking in all what the senior players are telling the younger players about Croke Park and its surrounds. The Wall sister’s from Ballymacarbry, Trisha says has been of particular help to her in letting her know what to expect when she runs onto the field. On Sunday Trisha follows in the footsteps of Olivia Condon, Honor Lonergan, Angie Walsh and Marion Troy as Na nDéise players to run onto Croke Park on All-Ireland Final day.

She knows that the players that have been part of Waterford teams to play there in the past have encouraged others to take up the game of Ladies Football and she is hoping that her involvement will get other young girls as well as the more mature and those that might not have played football for some while to get involved in the game.

She feels with the right work rate and dedication that others from the area can follow her and those that have gone before her and get to be part of a Waterford team to play in Croke Park on All-Ireland Final Day in the future.

“We (Na nDéise) already have a few girls playing underage football for the County” says Trisha and “hopefully they will keep up the good work and they might get to play in Croke Park” in the future.

Trisha is grateful to be part of the Waterford panel this year and has got to play in a number of league and challenge games. Naturally, she is disappointed to not to have got to play more games this year but openly admits that she could have put in a lot more of an effort this year, and maybe if she had pushed herself more she might have played more than she did. But one thing Trisha always had is determination and she will be going all out next year to show why she should be given more of a run in the side.

Trisha has played for the county right up the different levels from under 14 and to date she has won a Minor ‘B’ Shield All-Ireland Medal in recent years and a Munster Intermediate medal this year.

An All-Ireland medal would be something that Trisha has always dreamt about winning, but know that to do so will be no easy task as Armagh will provide stiff opposition this Sunday as they have drawn and beaten Waterford in their two previous meetings this year.

Sunday’s All-Ireland Final in Croke Park has a 2pm throw in and will be preceded by the Junior Final between Antrim and Louth and followed by the senior game between Cork and Kerry.

 

For those who cannot get to the game, it will be shown live on TG4 and WLR.fm will have Kieran O’Connor and Michael Ryan in situ to tell listeners what is happening from start to finish