Twenty-two years is a long time to carry expectation, disappointment and memory. Long enough for children who watched Galway lift the Brendan Martin Cup in 2004 to return to Croke Park on Sunday with children of their own. Long enough for dreams to harden into burdens, for near misses to become scars, for every promising generation to be measured against the one that had gone before.
And when the final whistle finally sounded beneath the Hogan Stand, after confusion, controversy and one final surge of panic, it was not merely a football match that had ended. It was a wait. It was a story that had hung over Galway football for more than two decades.
The famine was over.
The west was awake once again.
There was something almost cruelly poetic, too, in who stood on the opposite side.
For the second Sunday in succession, Kerry travelled to Croke Park carrying every intention of writing their own glorious chapter, only to become supporting characters in somebody else's celebration. A week after the men's footballers watched Mayo end their own long wait for Sam Maguire, the Kingdom women found themselves cast in precisely the same role.
Nobody travels to Dublin to play the supporting cast. Yet twice in eight days Kerry found themselves watching another county discover what long-awaited happiness feels like.
That is sport's most unforgiving truth. One team's ecstasy almost always demands another's agony.
This Galway triumph carried both in abundance.
It was not a classic. It never pretended to be. For long stretches it resembled a chess match played with footballs rather than pieces, every attack met by layers of disciplined defending, every score wrestled from the game rather than allowed to flow naturally.
Galway arrived with a lesson learned from 24 months earlier.
The 2024 final had ended in humiliation as Kerry's pace and movement tore through them with relentless efficiency. There would be no repeat. Every blade of Croke Park grass that had looked inviting to Kerry then was fenced off this time by maroon jerseys retreating with remarkable discipline.
Galway looked shaky early on, but then found their mojo and attacked with verve, but were errant with their shooting.
Beauty was sacrificed for survival.
Nobody wearing maroon will ever apologise for that.
The match lurched rather than flowed, but beneath the tactical caution was extraordinary tension. Every point felt valuable. Every turnover felt seismic. Every mistake threatened to become decisive.
Classic Coen
That was the landscape into which Leanne Coen burst.
Twice.
Her first goal arrived with artistry. Gathering possession, she glided beyond challenges with the confidence of a player who could see possibilities invisible to everyone else. The finish, struck with the outside of her right boot, possessed both delicacy and conviction, spinning beyond Mary Ellen Bolger and into the Kerry net.
It was a goal worthy of an All-Ireland final.
Her second was altogether different.
It arrived when Galway most needed courage. Kerry had finally discovered rhythm. Síofra O'Shea had begun to dictate matters, twisting through tackles and reminding everyone why she remains one of the finest footballers in the country. Momentum had swung south.
Champions recognise such moments.
Galway did.
Nicola Ward surged forward, committed defenders, slipped the perfect pass inside and Coen once again finished with devastating certainty.
Two chances.
Two goals.
In a final where scores were painfully scarce, Coen's finishing proved priceless. I had opined beforehand that Galway needed net-ripplers if they were to outscore Kerry. And they did.
Yet if Coen supplied the moments that decorated the highlights reel, Galway's victory rested upon foundations built elsewhere.
Bronagh Quinn's relentless attention to O'Shea.
Nicola Ward's leadership.
The tireless work of the Divilly sisters.
Kate Geraghty's composure.
Players sacrificing personal glory for collective success.
It was not glamorous football.
It was winning football.
And after 22 years, nobody in Galway was interested in aesthetic arguments.
There remained, however, one final examination.
Kerry refused to disappear.
O'Shea continued searching for openings with the stubborn brilliance that defines great forwards. Niamh Ní Chonchúir found scores when they seemed impossible. Caoimhe Evans equalised after Coen's second goal and suddenly every Galway supporter inside Croke Park began counting seconds instead of points.
Then came the score that will live forever in Galway folklore.
Eva Noone.
Fifty-eight minutes gone.
The attack had already stretched Kerry's defence. Possession had been recycled patiently, intelligently, refusing to force an opportunity that was not there. Eventually the ball arrived with Noone on the right-hand side.
There remained work to do.
Her finish was exquisite. And exorcised some pain from a tumultous year.
Curled over with her left foot under immense pressure, it drifted between the posts carrying with it the weight of an entire county's hope.
There are points worth one on the scoreboard.
There are points worth twenty-two years.
This was the latter.
Still, Croke Park was not finished with its drama.
Indeed, it had saved its most extraordinary theatre until the very end.
A foul. Advantage. Then the whistle. Confusion.
Síofra O'Shea, believing play remained alive, split the posts only to discover referee Maggie Farrelly had already called play back for the free. Relief for Galway. Frustration for Kerry.
Then came the final act.
O'Shea launched the resulting free into a crowded square. Bodies rose. Hands stretched. The ball crossed the line and, for a fleeting heartbeat, Kerry believed they had stolen immortality.
O'Shea celebrated.
Galway wilted.
The Brendan Martin Cup appeared destined for green and gold.
Except it wasn't.
Farrelly had already blown for a square ball.
The celebrations froze.
Then reversed.
In scarcely three seconds, Kerry experienced the intoxicating rush of salvation before plunging into devastation. Galway travelled the identical emotional road in the opposite direction.
Sport can be breathtakingly beautiful.
It can also be breathtakingly cruel.
The rule was correctly applied. Erica McGlynn had entered the square before the ball arrived. Regulations leave little room for sentiment.
That did not lessen Kerry's pain.
Nor should it.
Finals are remembered not only by medals collected but by opportunities that slipped away. Kerry's players collapsed where they stood, trying to comprehend how joy had evaporated so quickly.
Galway, meanwhile, scarcely dared believe it.
Only when the hooter sounded did reality finally settle over Croke Park.
I spoke to Niamh Duggan beforehand and told her she might be the lucky omen as she had plundered the first goal when Galway last won in 2004.
The tears flowed.
The embraces became endless.
The years disappeared.
There was fitting symmetry in hearing The Saw Doctors echo around headquarters once again. Their music has become intertwined with Galway sporting triumphs because it speaks to something deeper than victory. It speaks of belonging, of place, of identity.
This was never merely about football.
This was about every player who lost finals in 2005, 2019 and 2025. About every volunteer who opened gates on wet winter evenings. About every coach driving miles across Connacht. About every young girl who pulled on maroon believing someday might finally arrive.
Someday had arrived.
Kate Geraghty climbed the steps to accept the Brendan Martin Cup knowing she represented far more than the fifteen players who had started the game. She represented two decades of perseverance.
The remarkable thing about Galway's journey is that they never stopped returning.
Heartbreak in 2005.
Heartbreak in 2019.
Heartbreak against this very Kerry side two years ago.
Each defeat could have been accepted as the end of the story.
Instead, each became another chapter leading here.
Champions are not always defined by how brilliantly they win. Sometimes they are defined by how stubbornly they refuse to stop believing after losing.
Galway embodied that truth.
For Kerry, there will be only hurt today.
There should be.
That is the price paid by great teams who fall just short. They will question decisions, replay moments and wonder what might have been. Such reflections are inevitable.
Yet history has a habit of being kinder than the immediate aftermath allows.
They were beaten not by brilliance alone but by resilience of the highest order.
As one famine ended, another magnificent football county was left wondering how long its own next wait might become.
But this day belonged to Galway.
It belonged to Leanne Coen's unforgettable goals.
To Eva Noone's nerve and resilience.
To defenders who threw themselves into every challenge.
To supporters who had waited twenty-two long years for another afternoon like this.
There will be more skilful finals.
There will be higher-scoring finals.
There may even be more dramatic finishes.
There will not be many that carry the emotional weight of this one.
When history remembers the summer of 2026, it will remember that the Brendan Martin Cup finally came home with Galway. It will remember that after twenty-two years of waiting, of hoping, of falling and rising again, the girls shaped by Daniel Moynihan and his mentors and backroom staff had repaid his faith in them.
And it will remember, too, that for the second Sunday in succession, Kerry stood on Croke Park's biggest stage, watching another county celebrate the sweetest feeling in Irish sport: the end of a famine.
Gaillimh Abu.
