It was Christmas and the sun was low behind Slea Head and in the still serenity of Milltown Cemetery, Paul Geaney sat on the edge of his mother’s grave and smiled. He had his three kids with him – Paul Óg on one knee, Christina on the other, Páidí standing at his left shoulder. On the grave behind him sat the Bishop Moynihan Cup, ribbons of Dingle red and white flowing from it still. His wife Siún took her phone and froze the moment in time.
His mother was Chrissy Geaney (née Fitzgerald) and she died in 2014. She was the daughter of a Rás Tailteann-winning cyclist and she married into the maw of Dingle football. She was taken at the unspeakably young age of 46, when Paul was just 23. It gets easier with time. Which is not to say that it ever gets easy.
“My mom obviously never met my three kids,” he says. “And she was unreal with kids. It was nice to bring them to the grave on Christmas and to bring a couple of cups as well, obviously. She was huge into GAA.
“A couple of weeks before she passed, we won the Sigerson [with UCC]. It was my first year with Kerry as a starter. We brought the Sigerson into the hospital – she was in palliative care for nearly all of after Christmas. She passed from brain cancer, which is a tough disease because it almost steals the person from you in the same way as dementia or Alzheimer’s can do. With the tumour, the brain is messed around a lot.
“But it was funny – we got a glimpse of her personality when I brought in the cup to the hospital because the first thing she did was she started pretending she was drinking out of it. Her speech was mostly gone and towards the end, these little windows were all we were getting from her. But bringing the cup, it was nice to see that little bit of personality still in her.
“So yeah, it was lovely at Christmas to be able to go up there and bring the kids and the cups and sit there. I suppose we don’t really know are they there or not, but you still feel it. And Christmas Day was so nice as well with the weather. The graveyard in Dingle is looking down on the bay, the view is fantastic. There was no better place to be.”
It’s been that sort of winter in west Kerry, shimmering with hope and family and ties that bind. With Dingle and An Ghaeltacht pacing each other up the mountain, the club championships have consumed everybody. Geaney’s wife is Siún Ní Shé, daughter of Páidí and brother of Pádraig Óg who played wing back in An Ghaeltacht’s All-Ireland win last weekend. For both sides of the family to make it to Croke Park in January is moon shot stuff.
Dingle have been coming. When their minors won back-to-back Kerry championships in 2014 and 2015, they knew they had the raw materials. Throw in the back-to-back Hogan Cups won by Pobalscoil Chorca Dhuibhne in that period and it was obvious that something was stirring. Geaney was 24 and had won his first All-Ireland with Kerry – he looked perfectly placed to guide the new generation to a first county title since the 1940s.
But nothing is inevitable. Losing Mark O’Connor to Aussie Rules in 2016 was a killer, like striking oil in a bog and seeing some big-hatted Texan arrive into town, patting them on the head and saying he’ll take it from here. A few lads went travelling, a few others fell away. The usual story.
“Ever since the two minor wins and the Hogan Cup, there has been a bit of an expectation on the lads from a very young age for us to go and win the county. And it didn’t happen for all those different reasons. But there would have been that expectation that we would win a county and try and go to Croke Park to win an All-Ireland club. That has been there ever since.
“So I suppose if you look at it in terms of what we actually achieved over the years, maybe this wasn’t totally expected by people outside looking in. But within our group, we had an expectation that we would win Kerry eventually. That was the target. And after that, you’d be hoping to kick on.”
The clock only runs in one direction though. The smooth-faced young boys who won all those titles back in 2014 and 2015 are all pushing 30 now. Geaney turned 35 in November. Dingle got to Kerry finals in 2018 and 2024 and were well beaten both times. In every sport in every country on every day of the week, teams miss their moment and life moves on without them.
“Time was ticking and we were aware of that too,” he says. “The last couple of years, we’ve kind of said it’s now or never for us. That was why the Castlehaven game [the Munster final Dingle lost on penalties in 2023] and the county final loss in 2024 were so tough to take.
“We knew that we were in prime position in those two years, that there were chances to go on and do something and it didn’t happen. And everything was so up in the air this year as well. We didn’t know how we were going to be fixed.”
Yet here they are. Still standing after all but one other team in the country has cried enough, still finding a way. Two Geaney goals in the last seven minutes earned them a come-from-behind win in the county final. They were seven down to St Finbarr’s in the Munster final but won it at the death with a two-pointer. They trailed Ballyboden by 10 the last day before Geaney’s late heroics forced extra-time and his two-pointer won it late on. It’s been the wildest ride.
Through it all, they’ve come together, layered strands of Dingle footballers blending into each other. O’Connor’s release from the Geelong Cats to keep playing in these games is some kind of miracle, proof maybe that there’s still room for love in the cold-hearted world of professional sport. But it’s not just him – Aidan and Patrick O’Connor came home from the US and Australia this winter as well. Geaney’s calf is screaming for a break but it’s hanging in there. The jigsaw has fallen into place somehow.
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In the evenings, on Thursday nights when they don’t have training, a few of them head out to Ventry to Tom Connolly’s sauna. In one corner you could have Mark O’Connor, the Aussie Rules player. In another, you’d have Paul Geaney, the two-time All Star. In between, one of the team’s Leaving Cert kids will be there ducking the books for the night. There’ll be cousins and brothers and neighbours and all the rest, just being there. Together.
“We’ve been doing it for the last two years, which is great because we see each other away from football, in a social way. It’s almost like a men’s shed kind of a job. We’ll chat about everything and anything and not really ever football. So we’ve got to know each other that way.
“There’s two young lads there, who are still in school and they pop in, there’s Billy [O’Connor] and myself who’d be on the other end of the spectrum and then all in between. Mark has been there every week since he’s been home, he’s totally bought into that side of it. So it’s been a big part of getting us to where we are so far.”
This is it, then. Another All-Ireland final. The iron rule of days like this is to understand that it’s very likely that you won’t be here again. So go and make the most of it. When you’re 35 years old and you have three kids at home and a pub to run with your name above the door, nobody needs to school you on what a precious thing a final is. Geaney might have another year or two in him. He doesn’t have five.
“I’ve always maintained that the body is going to slow down eventually. But once you leave the old man in, you’re f**ked. If your mind says in the morning, ‘I’ll not do it today ... ’ then your body will go along with it. But the hunger is still there and I’m very lucky to have a strong team behind me at home. Only for my wife at home and my father covering for me at work, I wouldn’t be able to keep going.
“That’s the truth of it. I get emotional talking about it sometimes. You ask me is it worth it – well, sure, of course it’s worth it for me. I get to do what I love and I get to pursue that for as long as I can. But Gaelic football is such a zero-sum game sometimes. There’s years you’re playing with Kerry and it’s win or nothing.
“But even when those years happened, I still got to go train with my mates and I still got to have time to myself for the gym or things that keep me healthy and happy on the mental side. The flip side of that is my wife is at home with the three kids and five times a week I’m walking out the door.
“Or in the pub, my father is covering for me and people are coming in the odd time looking for a photo and I’m not there. But he stands and chats away to all the people that I should be chatting to and he carries the can there. So it’s easy for me – it’s an easy decision to play football.
“I probably struggle with it all my life. Because you have to be selfish really to reach the top of the sport. And if you want to stay there for a long time, you have to be extremely selfish. And it’s kind of counterintuitive because I don’t want to be selfish. I’m just lucky that I can be.”
