by Daire Walsh 

Following a trophy-laden 2023 that saw her playing in eight different counties across three competitions, Lara Curran will have a short trek for Kildare’s opening game of the 2024 season tomorrow afternoon.

The primary training base for their county teams, the Manguard Plus Kildare GAA Centre of Excellence in Hawkfield is a distance of just over two kilometres from Curran’s home club of Milltown. It has also been used as a host venue for several of the Lilywhites’ matches in recent years and will once again be the port of call when they kick-start their Lidl National Football League Division 2 campaign against Monaghan (throw-in 2pm).

This will be the Lilies’ first game since edging out Clare in last August’s TG4 All-Ireland intermediate football championship showpiece at Croke Park, a victory that was preceded by their successes in Lidl NFL Division 3 and the TG4 Leinster intermediate championship.

“It’s only about a five minute drive, so we’re considered very lucky. Whereas there’s girls travelling from the north and the south of the county, which could be an hour or hour and a half round trips. We’re really blessed to have Hawkfield so close to us. It’s almost like our second home now,” Curran acknowledged.

“Last year was a great year for us. Obviously this year we’re just trying to look to build on that. We still have a lot of the team from last year with a few new girls coming in as well. We’re all really excited now to start the league and hopefully build game-by-game in the league.

“We’ll be playing a lot of newer teams this year that we hadn’t played when we were in Division Three or intermediate. Hopefully that will do us good moving on into the Leinster championship, and then into the All-Ireland championship as well.”

Though it remains to be seen who Kildare will face when it comes to the All-Ireland senior championship later on in the summer, Diane O’Hora’s side are expected to be significantly road tested in advance of their long-awaited return to the Brendan Martin Cup.

Aside from getting the chance to pit their wits against some tricky opponents in NFL Division 2, Kildare’s All-Ireland IFC victory of 2023 ensures that there will be a four-team Leinster senior championship later on this year. In addition to Laois — who take on the Lilies in a league showdown at Hawkfield on March 3 — the heavyweight duo of Dublin and Meath are also operating at the top-tier within the eastern province.

As the only two sides to have captured the All-Ireland senior crown since 2017, the Jackies and the Royals are rightly considered to be the standard bearers in Leinster. The expectation is that Kildare will enter their encounters with both these teams as underdogs, but having worked so hard to get back to his stage, this is the kind of test Curran and her team-mates are going to crave.

“It will be great to get the games against Meath and Dublin. We’ve played Laois in the past a good few times. The likes of Dublin, who have won countless All-Irelands, have dominated the Leinster championship. It will be good definitely to test ourselves against them. Once we just put in a good performance, anything can really happen on the day.”

Although she will only be turning 24 this year, Curran has been a part of the Lilies senior set-up for quite some time. Back in 2017 — their most recent season as a top-tier outfit — Curran featured for Kildare in Leinster SFC games against both Laois and Westmeath.

She had joined up with the panel after the county’s minor side had ended their championship campaign, but with Kildare emerging as All-Ireland ‘B’ winners at the U18 grade the following year, it wasn’t until 2019 that Curran fully established herself as a bona fide adult inter-county footballer.

Across 10 starts in league and championship fare that season, the livewire attacker contributed an impressive tally of 1-24 for the Lilywhites.

“2019 was probably my first proper full year on the team. The girls were very welcoming. It was great to learn from the girls that had been on the panel for a couple of years. I think when you’re younger going into a panel, you don’t really fear anything, which is good in a sense.

“It’s learning from the girls around you, learning from the more physical games as well. The group of players that would have been minor filtering through, it would have really brought us on. It was great, even the training and the matches really brought us on.”

At both club and inter-county level, Curran, a primary school teacher at Robertstown National School, has the benefit of playing under managers who have excelled in their chosen sporting pursuits.

Now in her second year at the Kildare helm, the aforementioned Diane O’Hora is a three-time All-Ireland senior championship winner with her native Mayo and was previously part of the Down backroom team for their TG4 All-Ireland IFC triumph of 2014.

Despite having his hands full as an Irish flat racing trainer since bringing his career as a jockey to a close a little under a decade ago, Johnny Murtagh has been heavily involved in Milltown and took over their senior ladies side in 2023.

He was joined on the management team by Curran’s father Denis and with Murtagh’s own daughters Lauren and Grace (who are also part of the Lilywhites panel) featuring prominently, Milltown made it all the way to a Kildare Junior ‘A’ Championship decider - where Carbury edged them out by a single point.

“Johnny is great. This year we were actually quite unfortunate with club. We got to two finals, but unfortunately lost by a point in both. He’s great at motivating. He really has a passion for the game, so it’s great to have him around training and for the matches, driving us on,” Curran added.

“His commitment to the club drives us on as well to be more committed at training and matches. He’s a great person to have around the club and he’s heavily involved in the ladies side of things in the club. It’s great for the younger girls as well to see him around and gain motivation from that as well.”

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