Kerry captain Anna Galvin: We don’t feel like we’re living in the shadow of the men’s team… football is a huge part of our culture in the Kingdom and the fans get behind us all

‘Four codes. One province. One launch.’

Never mind that the eyes of the sporting public were on events in Prague on Thursday evening – the Republic of Ireland’s World Cup play-off against Czechia on Thursday night drew an average of 1.37 million viewers on RTÉ2 – but a small bit of local history was being made on Thursday in Tipperary.

For the first time, the launch of the 2026 Munster championships was an integrated event, covering hurling, Gaelic football, camogie and ladies football.

New GAA president Derek Kent might have his own reservations about the practicality of the mooted 2027 deadline for integration between the associations, venturing that 2034 – to tie in to the GAA’s 150th anniversary – might be more realistic, but all the while significant change is afoot.

After players lined up for interview in the Dome sports hall attached to Semple Stadium, there were keynote speeches from Munster GAA chair Tim Murphy, Munster camogie chairperson Christine Ryan and Munster ladies football president Lorraine Royle.

Munster have taken the progressive step of taking real action, rather than paying lip service to the notion of integration. 

A series of double headers, combining the different codes, have been scheduled. Three senior camogie games and one women’s football match will be played before a trio of men’s fixtures over the course of April and May.

A ladies football clash of Kerry and Cork will be played before the Munster football championship final on May 10.

For Anna Galvin, who captained Kerry in the 2022 final against Meath, 10 years after first being part of the senior county squad, the progress on this front is ‘massive’.

Galvin was a leader and a dynamic midfield presence when Kerry finally got over the line in 2024, beating Galway to win a first senior All-Ireland in 31 years. And she knows exactly how initiatives like this can really make a difference.

‘Coming here to Semple Stadium, all four codes together, it’s really great and just nice to see it. It’s putting a good foot forward,’ said Galvin.

‘And in terms of growing the game and getting more people backing us, that’s huge to be playing ahead of the Munster final. That’s a brilliant audience to be playing in front of. And it’s important that people are interested and get to see the games.

‘That level of exposure is really good because not everyone is interested in coming to all the games. 

‘And that’s fair enough but maybe if they see the standard that it is they’ll be like, “Jeez, yeah, the women are playing today… let’s go down to Austin Stack Park and watch that actually because they were very good the other week ahead of the other game.”’

It’s the nature of a compressed inter-county season and the county teams’ conflicting form at the moment that Kerry’s two senior teams had different priorities at the weekend. 

Jack O’Connor’s men had a Division One league final to contest against Donegal, while the Kerry women triumphed in a vital final-round game against Kildare to avoid relegation to Division Two.

Rather than the men gobbling up the limelight or having to live in their shadow, Galvin says the grá in the county for Gaelic football is only a big positive on the whole. 

‘We’ve loads of people who just genuinely come to our games. Like don’t necessarily have massive connections to the team and are always at all of our games and you’re like “fair play to you”.

‘So no, I’ve never felt like there’s ever a competition in terms of them like taking the limelight or anything like that. In Kerry, football is just a huge part of our culture. 

‘It’s like that’s across the board in Ireland but I think, in Kerry, we’re very staunchly football. 

‘And I think when football in general is going well in the county people get behind it, whether it is the men or the women.

‘I would watch a lot of the games on TV and stuff like that, often don’t necessarily get to them – I’m from way down in South Kerry so if it’s a day where I don’t have to get in the car to go up to Tralee I’m probably not going to go up to watch the lads – but I certainly watch them on TV a lot.

‘I watch loads of their league games with keen interest in terms of how they are implementing the rules and stuff now as well and seeing what learnings you can take.’

As for the 2027 deadline for integration, Galvin knows that there is nothing to be gained by talk of pushing things out until 2034.

‘It was never going to be a case that everything was going to be blended by the time it got to 2027 anyway. 

‘But we have to still aim for those targets and then reassess as we go along. I think if we put dates too far in advance progress is going to just slow up and you will lose momentum.’

After years based in Dublin and enduring a long commute to games and training, Galvin’s role as an Occupational Therapist at University of Limerick has helped her to extend her playing career into her 30s when it would have been easier perhaps to walk away after winning the 2024 All-Ireland.

Her partner Adrian O’Sullivan was a coach to the Cork camogie team that reached last year’s All-Ireland final and has been brought on board by Waterford senior hurling manager Peter Queally this year. 

So when it comes to the new rules introduced to ladies football this year, she’s well used to the kind of conversations around coaching and tactical trends that inform an elite dressing room.

‘The difference they’ve made in the men’s game – I think everybody saw it in championship last year – so I’ll be looking forward to seeing how we get on with the new rules with the better weather, better pitches and things like that. I think they’ve been very positive for the most part. 

‘There’s still a little bit of figuring out just about the ins and outs of them but I think that was always going to be the case.

‘The extra physicality is definitely something that we have been looking for for a long, long time so I was really pleased to see that coming in and I think that’s been a big help to the games.’