By Daire Walsh

She achieved a significant career milestone a fortnight ago and now Magheracloone attacking ace Leanne Maguire has another one in her sights at the home of Monaghan football tomorrow afternoon.

Despite breaking into the adult ranks of her club back in 2012, Maguire reckons she hadn’t tasted a victory of any kind against the all-conquering Donaghmoyne until their senior county championship semi-final meeting two weeks ago. While Donaghmoyne were chasing a 22nd consecutive Monaghan SFC title this season, seven points from Maguire helped the challengers towards a 0-9 to 0-4 triumph that brought their neighbours’ remarkable stranglehold on the competition to an end.

Donaghmoyne had also won 14 Ulster senior club championship crowns and five All-Ireland senior championships during a monumentally successful period, but will now be forced to watch on as Magheracloone and Emyvale face off at St Tiernach’s Park, Clones tomorrow (Sunday, throw-in 4.15pm) for the right to take their spot at the summit of the Monaghan club scene.

“It can be just on the day, anything can happen. From what I remember, league or championship, we’ve never beaten Donaghmoyne. It was a real good day for us. I’d say that shocked probably a lot in the county and maybe the country as well," Maguire said.

“Real credit to our defence, I have to say. They worked very hard. I’d say we got the most turnovers we nearly got in any game in the championship. That was something that we were going to have to do if we wanted to beat Donaghmoyne, get them turned over and break at pace.

“From what we know of Emyvale, they like to move the ball at pace. They have players with pace. They try to transition from back to front quite quickly and you still have big names coming from ladies football still playing them. We definitely don’t underestimate them and we’ve a big task ahead of us, but I really believe that we can hopefully get over the line.”

Interestingly, the last Monaghan senior ladies decider not to feature Donaghmoyne also represented the most recent appearance by Magheracloone in a top-tier showpiece. Despite a 1-7 haul from county star Niamh Kindlon for the challengers, Monaghan Harps claimed their third successive county senior title with a nail-biting 5-8 to 1-19 win in Donaghmoyne on August 25, 2002.

Kindlon was still playing 10 years later when a Magheracloone side that also included Maguire claimed a Monaghan intermediate title with a final victory over Aghabog. A precocious teenager for that particular success, Maguire amassed an astounding personal tally of 1-11 when her club once again secured intermediate championship honours against Inniskeen in September 2020.

A source of great inspiration to Maguire during her formative years on the team, Kindlon continues to play a key role for Magheracloone as part of the current management set-up alongside her sister Fiona.

“2012 would have been my first year on the panel. Fiona Kindlon, who is over us now, would have brought me onto the panel at that stage. That would have been my first taste of senior football and winning the intermediate championship that year was brilliant.

“I was only maybe 16, I think, when I first came onto the senior club team and a great honour to get to play with Niamh. One of the most decorated ladies footballers in the country, never mind in county Monaghan. It’s really fitting to have herself and Fiona over us this year.”

At the same time that she was learning the ways of adult football at club level, Maguire was an underage star on the inter-county scene – scoring 3-4 when Monaghan defeated Tyrone in an Ulster U16 football championship final in 2011.

She subsequently graduated to the senior panel and while there have been some years when she wasn’t involved, Maguire was a regular presence for the Farney County throughout 2024.

Whereas the aforementioned Niamh Kindlon competed in no fewer than seven TG4 All-Ireland senior football championship finals (winning one as a teenager in 1997), her former Magheracloone team-mate currently finds herself operating in the second-tier of ladies football.

The county’s continuous 30-year stint in the Brendan Martin Cup came to an end in 2022 and while they led by three points at an advanced stage of their meeting at Pairc Esler, Newry on June 30, Monaghan’s quest for a return to the top table ended this year in an intermediate championship quarter-final loss to Down.

Yet despite the obvious frustration at this result (a 2-12 to 2-9 defeat), Maguire maintains a healthy degree of optimism about Monaghan’s inter-county future.

“Disappointed not to get across the line. In the end it could have gone either way. We probably just left ourselves with a little too much to do in the second half, but it’s really positive overall going forward and into next year, we have that belief that those things are achievable for us.

“An aim for us, our goal we had at the start of the year, was to try and make sure that we stayed in that Division Two [league] tier. Because that is where we feel we’re capable. We believe that we can push on from this year and we have that belief that we’re good enough to compete with those teams. Definitely.”

A graduate from the Dundalk Institute of Technology who is hoping to dip into the world of online coaching in the next few years (she already has her own fitness page on Facebook), Maguire was the sole representative from Magheracloone on the Monaghan panel this year. However, given the impact they have made to date on the local scene in 2024, Maguire wouldn’t be surprised if she was joined by some of her team-mates in the Farney set-up before too long.

“There is definitely girls there, in my own club and throughout the county, who definitely would be a big help to the panel. Management I’m sure are watching these games very closely and hoping to introduce some of those girls onto the panel,” Maguire added.

“The likes of Lauren Jones has been great for us this year throughout the championship. Some of the younger girls even, the likes of Megan Byrne and Abi Carolan, all doing brilliant work for us there at club level.”

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