Starting their 2024 season with their first match against Monaghan this Sunday, the 21st of January, Lara Curran is gearing up for a successful start to the ladies' year. After representing over eight counties in three divisions in 2023, Lara returns to home soil for Kildare's opening game of the season.
The team's training base, the Manguard Plus Kildare GAA Centre of Excellence lies just over two kilometres from Lara Curran's home club in Milltown, and has hosted a series of the Kildare ladies' matches, including tomorrow's clash with Monaghan, kicking off at 2pm.
This will be the team's first game since defeating Clare in the TG4 All-Ireland intermediate football championship at Croke Park last August, a game that took place after a series of successes for the Lilywhite's in their Lidl NFL Division 3 campaign and the earlier stages of the TG4 Leinster Intermediate Championship.
13 August 2023; Lara Curran of Kildare in action against Grainne Harvey of Clare
during the 2023 TG4 All-Ireland Ladies Intermediate Football Championship Final
match between Clare and Kildare at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Seb
Daly/Sportsfile
Speaking on tomorrow's opening game against Monaghan. Lara Curran commented;
“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 fewnew 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.”
While Kildare's opponents for the All-Ireland senior championship remain unknown, it is expected that Diane O'Hora's side will be significantly tested in the approach of their long-anticipated return to the Brendan Martin Cup. In addition to Laois, who they will challenge on March 3 in the league, Kildare will also face Dublin and Meath in their Leinster Senior Championship campaign. It is expected that Kildare will enter this challenge as underdogs, but Lara Curran confirms that this is a test the Kildare ladies will welcome.
“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.”
At the age of just 24, Lara Curran has been involved with the Kildare senior ladies team for a significant time. Curran featured on the team in 2017, the ladies' last game at this level, in the Leinster Senior Championship against Laois and Westmeath. She has just joined this level after the county's minor team had ended their championship campaign, but it wasn't until 2019 that Curran established herself an official senior player. She achieved 10 starts that season, in both league and championship, rallying up a remarkable tally of 1-24 for Kildare.
“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 club and intercounty level, Curran has experienced the benefits of playing under excellent managers, including Johnny Murtagh, who has been heavily involved in her club Milltown and took over their senior side in 2023. He was assisted on the management team by Curran's own father Denis, taking Milltown all the way to the Kildare Junior 'A' Championship decider, where they lost out by a single point to Carbury. Curran added;
“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,”“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.”
15 August 2021; Lara Curran of Kildare during the TG4 All-Ireland Senior Ladies
Football Championship Semi-Final match between Kildare and Westmeath at
Parnell Park in Dublin. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
