Niamh Collins Interview
- Mar 30,2022
Collins hoping Dublin ladies learn from League disappointment
By John Harrington featured on GAA.ie
It’s almost a week after their dramatic defeat to Donegal in Lidl NFL Division 1 semi-final when she met the media, but the impact of the sucker-punch loss is still writ large on Niamh Collins’ face.
She and her Dublin team-mates looked all set for the Final when they had turned a two-point deficit into a three-point lead with three minutes to go.
But Donegal summoned a storm in those closing minutes as goals from Emma McCrory and Yvonne Bonner blew the Dubs away.
“I think we were left reeling afterwards,” admitted Collins at the launch of John West Féile 2022. “It’s not a situation you want to be in to be closing out a game five points up and coming away with a loss.
“Definitely a whole bunch of learnings is what we are going to take from it, which is what you have to do in these situations. Yeah, unfortunate.
“We would rather be playing a league final so we’re going to use these six weeks to learn and build for the Leinster campaign.”
The defeat to Donegal is another reminder that the chasing pack have caught up with a Dublin team that dominated the scene with four All-Ireland titles in a row from 2017 to 2020 and two National League titles in 2017 and 2021.
Mick Bohan’s team will still be favourites for this year’s Championship, but there’s now a greater number of genuine contenders than there’s been for quite some time.
“100%,” says Collins. “The ladies football landscape has changed massively. You’re no longer going out at any point thinking ‘I have this game, we’re going to beat this team’. It’s just not like that anymore.
Everyone has raised their game to a level where it’s at least competitive and now you’re not looking at the top two reaching the final every year. It genuinely could be anyone in the top eight so I think it’s great.
“That’s what you want. You want to have competitive games. At the end of the day, we’re all individuals going out to win our All-Ireland but we’re also ambassadors for the game and the game we love to play, our national game, we want to raise the standard and that can’t just be one team.
It has to be all teams so I think it’s really good that it’s competitive.”
The eye test will tell you that the standard of Ladies Football has risen significantly in the last 10 years.
Every factet of the game has been elevated – skill, speed, physicality, and tactical nous.
Collins has been a member of the Dublin panel since 2014 so is a good position to assess that upward trajectory.
“I would say it’s a little bit of everything,” she says. “In terms of the actual sessions we get and backroom teams we have is completely different. Full S&C teams, full stats teams, nutritionist.
“They weren’t in place 10 years ago so you were going out and doing your best at what you could do on the football field but there are a lot of other elements that feed into a team being successful.
“You can have all the football intelligence and be a great, clever footballer and train as hard as you want but if another team has those advantages, those benefits, it feeds into a successful team.
“That’s becoming the standard now, that’s becoming the par and the GPA have been great in terms of funding, ensuring that there is a charter we can get those structures in place across the board or at least work towards getting it across the board for all ladies teams. That’s what’s driving the standards. We’re stronger, we’ve better nutrition, we’re training better as a result.”
Meath’s unexpected All-Ireland Final triumph over Dublin in 2021 was one of the greatest sports stories of the year with every neutral enjoying it almost as much as Meath supporters did.
Collins knows those neutrals will probably rooting for another team to come along and take down Dublin this year, and is happy to use it as fuel for her inner fire.
“Yeah, I think so but I think that’s just natural, that’s just sport,” she says.
“Neutrals always want to see something exciting and I think I have a similar view when I’m watching other sports.
“I don’t mind that at all, I think if anything it gives us more bite to want to prove people wrong and want to continue to be the champions so let them – I think it’s fine. I have no problem, I don’t mind.”
Article as featured on GAA.ie Wednesday 30th March 2022.