LGFA MATCH PROGRAMME: NIAMH KINDLON (MONAGHAN)
By Daire Walsh
There aren’t many players who get to feature in an All-Ireland final at the tender age of 16, but that is exactly what Monaghan’s Niamh Kindlon managed to do in 1997.
After watching the Farney County claim the Brendan Martin Cup with a replay win over Laois a year earlier, Kindlon suddenly found herself thrust into the LGFA limelight much sooner than she had expected.
Remarkably, she wasn’t alone in this regard as her Monaghan U16 colleagues Edel Byrne (Kindlon’s Magheracloone Mitchells club-mate) and Martina Grey were also part of the senior starting line-up for their All-Ireland SFC showpiece duel with Waterford on October 12, 1997. Their underage inter-county coach Michelle Murphy also appeared as a substitute in a game that Monaghan won with two points to spare (2-15 to 1-16).
“[I was] very, very young and in awe of the Waterford players and the Monaghan players. To be playing alongside them, obviously I had looked up to them for so many years. We were going for two-in-a-row and it was great first of all to be part of the team and to be starting. To play in my first All-Ireland and win it was obviously a massive bonus,” Kindlon acknowledged.
“You would have had players, they were coaching you, but you were hoping someday that you might emulate what they’d done. You didn’t think it was going to happen so quickly and at such a young age too.
“Once the three of us [Kindlon, Byrne and Grey] broke in, we would have been starting and there was a few more on the panel as well. A few other girls that would have been on the same U16 county with us that year. Then in the following year, 1998, there would have been another influx of younger players coming in as well.”
While they came from behind in a frantic – and much talked about – finale to secure back-to-back All-Ireland crowns, Monaghan had brought a commanding 2-9 to 1-3 lead into the interval at Croke Park for that 1997 decider. Kindlon joined Byrne in rattling the net during a dominant opening period for her team and this moment is still vivid in her mind.
“It’s one thing to play in Croke Park and play in an All-Ireland final, but the next thing on a personal level is maybe to score. I got the opportunity to score that goal and I can still remember that feeling. I can remember how brilliant it was at that stage.
“It came before half-time and to have ticked that box as well… At that stage we still didn’t know if we were going to win it. At that age to play in Croke Park was a big thing, but to score as well was an added bonus.”
While Kindlon ending up on the losing side in five subsequent All-Ireland finals (the most recent being in 2013), that success in her debut season as a senior inter-county footballer made her career with Monaghan something to cherish.
Still a schoolgirl at the time, she readily recalls the excitement of the Farney team bus arriving in her hometown of Carrickmacross the day after their All-Ireland triumph.
“We had obviously watched the girls in ’96 coming home that year after the replay and the cup coming through the town on the open top bus. Now 12 months later we were up there with it,” Kindlon added.
“A load of our school friends had stayed around after school, to be there to greet us. That’s the bit we remember especially, coming into our local town and obviously our club were well represented there in supporting us too.”