“I did the very classic sore loser thing and just completely avoided it,” she said. “It was a Bank Holiday and I went to a little cabin in Wicklow and avoided football completely. It just happened to coincide with the match. I’ll watch it back at some point, that match, I know it was pretty convincing for Kerry, that seems to be the main thing to take away from it.”
Seeing their conquerors beaten comprehensively left her with mixed feelings.
“It’s a real double-edged sword. You want to see the team that beat you go and win it because that’s some sort of vindication. I think Galway on the day they beat us, not to take away from Galway, but I think we beat ourselves to a large extent. The levels of negative turn-overs, I don’t know the final stats but I know we probably missed all of our KPIs, particularly in the negative turnovers perspective.
“We gave them back oxygen constantly and we still should have won it. It probably shouldn’t have gone to extra-time at all. So I think, yeah, it’s less about seeing them getting beaten comprehensively and more that we didn’t turn up on the day. They turned up slightly more than we did.”
Owens has made a full recovery from the injury which ruled her out of last year’s campaign when Dublin won the All-Ireland while she was on a break in Australia. She tore her ACL in the 2022 All-Ireland quarter final defeat by Donegal.
She suffered the same injury on the same knee in 2019 during the group stages, returning for the 2020 championship.
The Galway defeat this year will be analysed in good time. “I haven’t watched it back,” she said, speaking at the launch of the 2024 Beko Club Champion in Croke Park this week. “I think it was one of those days. Quarter-finals is a horrible time to lose anyway. No time is great to lose, quarter-finals not great to lose either. From the perspective of our team, we got a bit unlucky with injuries towards the end of the year but that’s not enough of a rationale for that performance we put in. We didn’t turn up on the day, things didn’t click.
“It’s funny because some of this group would have been around for three All-Irelands that we lost. It’s a case of you just need to let the dust settle and we’ll come back… probably not too long away now. In October we’ll probably come back and just reassess what went wrong and what we need to change this year.”
She was a spectator at the Leinster football final this year when Dublin defeated Louth, having played in the curtain-raiser, the ladies provincial final, the same day. Watching the ball endlessly recycled in a multitude of hand-passes, moving laterally or backwards, wasn’t her idea of entertainment.
“I think that’s where you see the football this year compared to the hurling – the hurling completely lit up the GAA world. All the Brits were watching it.
‘Even after our Leinster final, Dublin were playing Louth here, and we watched the first half before we left. We were down here, and just watching the likes of Con O’Callaghan running out, getting on the ball, handpassing it back, running back around… constant movement, you need to do it, but it’s just crap to watch.”
The ladies game has also seen similar patterns develop, she acknowledged. “We have shifted towards blanket defences, we have to play a lot of them. We lost in 2022 to Donegal with 15 back.”
She understands the logic, but isn’t a fan. “We won All-Irelands based on teams going toe-to-toe with us and we had fast players who were able to exploit gaps. I understand why people drop but it’s frustrating to watch, it’s frustrating to play against.”
Owens would also like to see an allowance for more contact in the ladies game. “It’s unfortunate the way it’s gone, that games can be controlled to some extent by to what extent the referees are prepared to let contact go at all. I think we are at a stage where there is so much strength and conditioning work done, there is no reason why with some refs with any contact it’s a free, it disrupts the game, it’s frustrating to watch, it’s frustrating for everyone. So that’s something I would like to see, a bit more contact from that perspective.”
