Absent players opens the door for new Leitrim stars believes Garrity

Not too many Leitrim teams have ever had to worry about what impact of All-Ireland celebrations may have on  the following season but as the County’s Green & Gold Ladies side prepare for the opening round of the Lidl LGFA Division 4 next Sunday in Kiltubrid against Fermanagh, manager Jonny Garrity is quietly confident.

Not one prone for hyperbole or downplaying the opposition, Jonny agrees that Leitrim are in a  unique position as they start their season as TG4 LGFA All-Ireland Intermediate Champions but the Tyrone native is been more than happy with what he has witnessed on the training field since the team returned to his set-up.

“Knowing how difficult or how effective the come-down has been, that will be shown when the games start,” Jonny told the Observer, “but I think when the time came to begin pre-season, the girls were focused and back on it. So we're looking forward to finding that out. But the signs are good, we're looking forward to it.”

After a round of celebrations that included trips to New York, national awards and their own medal presentation event, getting back to the grind of training might have been difficult, even for Jonny himself, but the manager says it has been the opposite! “Not personally it hasn’t and I think with the girls, what they've shown me at training, I think that they've found it quite natural to be back, to be pushing their boundaries again and trying to raise their standards even more. 

“So I think that as much as we enjoyed the celebrations and acknowledged the success that we enjoyed, I think once you get back onto the training field, reality hits home.”

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No team stays the same from one year to the next and the loss of Orla Flynn, Aine Redican, the Bruen sisters, Bronagh O’Rourke and Eimhin Quinn among others means quite a few new faces have been added to group, former stars like Dearbhaile Beirne and Emma Guckian back in the fold at training last Friday evening.

For Garrity, the loss of those players, so instrumental in lifting the Mary Quinn Cup has been off-set by a great response from new players: “We've lost a few players and one or two others maybe that just couldn't commit for various reasons and we were operating with a small panel anyway.

“We were always going to be bringing in quite a few, so with that, there's an opportunity for others and the fact is that whenever you take away another half a dozen out of that group, we've had to bring in wholesale changes so we have 16 new players in.”

Such has been the impact of new players that the manager believes his established players will have to work much harder to hold onto their places in 2025! “We've been lucky enough to add a lot of quality to the group, and I think that's a big reality check for last year's players, that they need to keep improving or else their place will be taken by somebody else. So that's a really good way to improve. “

That is quite a change from previous years when Leitrim struggled to get players to commit to the Ladies team so one wonders if it is simply a case of Leitrim’s victory inspiring potential players to join the squad? “There's a draw there,” reflects Jonny, “I think the girls have seen something that they would love to be involved in. And in a lot of the cases that's what happened. They've seen it, they want a part of it, they want to play a part in it. 

“We've been delighted with the level of players that we've been lucky enough to bring in. I think it's going to really add an edge to training. We're operating with a larger squad than last year so there's loads of positives and we're looking forward to getting those guys meaningful game time and seeing what they're made of during the National League.”

Having won the Intermediate title last year, Leitrim will immediately start as favourites for the Lidl Division 4 crown but, rather than seeing it as extra pressure on his squad, Jonny sees that as no different to any other year: “Even last year and in previous years, we would have been looked upon as one of the strongest teams in the Division.

“I'm sure teams would have raised their game for us in the past and known that it was going to be a tough day for them, so there'll be no difference in that respect. I think that there'll be a target on our back, absolutely, but at the same time, we have to deal with that and we have to use it to our advantage.

“Maybe there'll be a little trepidation out there when teams think about playing against this team that played so well in Croke Park so we have to go out and show them we haven't gone away. In fact, this team are better than ever and that'll be the objective for us.”

Curiously, Leitrim  play their League football in the basement division while playing championship at the highest level, an anomaly caused by the fact that Division 4 is the only of the four league groupings to feature League semi-finals and when Garrity’s side and Fermanagh were beaten last year in the semi-finals, they missed out on promotion.

But in keeping with his message throughout his tenure as manager, Garrity doesn’t look for excuses: “But it's not an anomaly it is a result of successive years of not getting out of Division 4 and also enjoying the success that we did in the Championship.

“We had a good run last year, winning six out of seven matches and lost the  one after that that mattered the most, the  semi-final. It might be unusual, but it's fair. All things being even, we need to do something about our league status and that's up to us and nobody else.”

Another quirky fact is that Division 4 will feature two of the three All-Ireland Championship winners with Intermediate winners facing Junior winners Fermanagh in their first game next Sunday, a Fermanagh team that Jonny himself led to an All-Ireland Junior title back in 2020 and a team Leitrim have a healthy rivalry with.

“There's a lot of connotations about this particular game. It's amazing that of three All-Ireland champions  last year, two of them are in the same division and that division happens to be Division 4 so yeah, it's a strange one. 

“But we know that there'll be no team more than Fermanagh who'll be looking to put that target on our back and to prove that the Junior champions can beat the Intermediate champions. They're going to be a huge challenge, we know that they've been working hard. 

“I'm sure it'll be a really, really stern opener for us. It's probably a match that you'd prefer down the line. But it's upon us and we have to go out and we have to show what we're made of. “

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The Leitrim manager is keen to point out that there are several other potential banana skins along the way: “I've been hearing good things about Sligo as well and we know that Longford have good players. There's loads of great teams there, Fermanagh will be amongst them and we'll be one of the teams like ourselves that'll harbour hopes of getting a promotion. 

“Look, it is what it is. We will be looking to be in good shape and to be ready for day one regardless if it was any of the seven other teams. But at the same time it focuses the mind. We know we're going to have to be on it. So, yeah, Fermanagh will be a tough one.”

So, as usual, the process is one game at a time? “100% and we're not looking past that first game. When that's out of the way, then all our focus will be on Wicklow and the second game, and that's the way we'll go - game by game. We want to win every match but we're also very conscious that the most important thing is getting ourselves into that knockout stage.

“It is very much a case of getting up and running, getting game time into gear's legs. But making sure that if and when we get to the knockout stage, it's then we want to really produce the big performances.”