MATCH INTERVIEW
DELIGHTED WITH LIFE!
Daire Walsh spoke to Dublin’s Orlagh Nolan after her All-Ireland win
By Daire Walsh
While she was excelling for Dublin in the TG4 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship during the summer just gone, a number of Orlagh Nolan’s former team-mates in a different sport were making history on the far side of the world.
A gifted soccer player who played for UCD Waves in the 2017 FAI Women’s Cup final at the Aviva Stadium, Nolan also represented the Republic of Ireland at U19 level. Across her five caps at this grade, she featured alongside Katie McCabe, Chloe Mustaki, Courtney Brosnan and Denise O’Sullivan – all of whom were part of the Ireland senior squad for their groundbreaking debut at the 2023 Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.
Another player who Nolan counted as an international colleague during this period was none other than Amy O’Connor, Cork’s hat-trick hero in their magnificent All-Ireland senior camogie championship decider success over Waterford at Croke Park on August 6.
Nolan replicated O’Connor in climbing the steps of the Hogan Stand seven days later as Dublin defeated Kerry on a scoreline of 0-18 to 1-10 to claim the Brendan Martin Cup. Much like her Leeside counterpart, Nolan feels no regrets over leaving soccer on the back burner – despite Ireland’s presence on the global stage earlier this year.
“That’s long ago. Soccer would have been my game growing up and you can take stuff from that, but I’m exactly where I need to be at the minute. I’m loving Gaelic at the minute. I’m with a great group,” Nolan remarked in the aftermath of the Jackies’ 0-18 to 1-10 triumph over the Kingdom.
“There’s 50 people in this group and there’s not a single person that you don’t go in and are delighted to see every day. You have a smile on your face and there’s 50 people that I’m happy to go training with every day.”
After opting to devote her time to Gaelic football in 2018, Nolan was called up to the Dublin panel the following year and was an unused substitute for their All-Ireland SFC final win over Galway in September.
Fast forward to December 2020 and she appeared off the bench as the Jackies claimed the Brendan Martin Cup for a fourth consecutive season with a showpiece victory against Cork that took place in an empty Croke Park due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
By 2021, Nolan had established herself as a regular starter at left half-back under Mick Bohan’s stewardship. While she suffered defeat to provincial rivals Meath in a championship showpiece two years ago, that particular campaign ended with her earning a first TG4 All Star.
Although she had settled in nicely to the half-back line, the 2023 inter-county season saw Nolan being handed a new position at centre-forward with the likes of Noelle Healy, Niamh McEvoy and Lyndsey Davey have moved into retirement in recent years.
This proved to be a shrewd decision by Bohan as the Ballinteer St John’s woman served as a perfect link between defence and attack. Over the course of the year, she also contributed an healthy tally of 5-9 – including a point in the early stages of the All-Ireland decider.
So strong is in form in 2023, that she is in contention for a second All Star – along with 11 other Dublin players – at the TG4 awards banquet at The Bonnington Dublin Hotel on November 18, and Orlagh was thrilled to be selected on the 2023 All-Star team.
“I just really like being in that middle-third. I just like to get on the ball and play head up. See what’s on. Sometimes it comes off, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s just trying to pick out the right option at the right time. You can do that wing-back or you can do it up front. I just try to do it all the time,” Nolan said of her transition to the Dublin attack.
Having scored a hat-trick of goals on her previous outing at Parnell Park against Waterford in Division 1 of the Lidl National Football League, Nolan also rattled the net in their All-Ireland SFC Group 3 clash with Kerry on June 17. However, Dublin came out on the wrong side of a 2-8 to 1-9 scoreline on this day and Nolan also featured when the Jackies were on the receiving end of an 11-point reversal (3-15 to 1-10) to the Kingdom in a top-tier league encounter at Austin Stack Park on February 18.
Even though a new-look Dublin squad have evolved significantly since these games, it clear they could ill-afford to let Kerry build up a head of steam in their third meeting of the year. Instead, it was Dublin who hit the ground running and had developed a comfortable 0-11 to 0-4 lead by the midway point in the action.
A Louise Ní Mhuircheartaigh goal on 55 minutes kept them on their toes in the closing moments, but the Jackies had done more than enough by then to a merit their eventual victory.
“We knew that we were going to have to come out and produce in the first half. We’ve seen them in the last two games, they got a great run at the start. Even back in Parnell Park, they scored 1-4 in the first five minutes and that really put us on the back-foot.
“We knew if we went out and kind of got the scoreboard ticking over that we’d have them chasing us. That’s exactly where we wanted them. Delighted that we could go out and put that performance in the first half.
“I think when we went down to Tralee, we were a different outfit. We were still learning. We’re still learning now. I think every game we’ve taken it game-by-game. If you put them all on top of each other, we’ve taken so much out of every single game. It’s just building on from there and we’ve done that so far.”
Whilst Nolan operated to telling effect on the ‘40’, former Ireland international rugby star Hannah Tyrrell had the game of her life on Dublin’s inside line. Of the 11 points that the Leinster champions recorded in the opening period of the SFC showpiece, eight of them came from the boot of the Na Fianna attacker.
When Tyrrell rejoined the Dublin set-up in 2021 after a seven-year hiatus, Nolan already had a brace of All-Ireland titles to her name. After a couple of seasons that ended in disappointment – a quarter-final defeat to Donegal in 2022 followed the showpiece loss to Meath a year earlier – she finally added her name to the list All-Ireland winning ladies footballers in the capital.
“She has been massive. She just brings so much experience, so much calmness. She just knows what to say and what to do. When the shot is on, she’ll take it. They just seemed to be on her for all today. Delighted that she took them all,” Nolan acknowledged in relation to Tyrrell.
Of course, the inevitable question that follows when a footballer had just added to their previous All-Ireland successes is how the current triumph compares to those that have gone before. Though Nolan finds it difficult to pick one from the three she has won so far, there is little doubt that the 2023 victory holds a special place in her heart.
“It’s hard to describe it. Each one is important, but right now this is the one that you’re really excited about and I’m just delighted with it,” Nolan added.