Galway’s Aine Keane is conscious that their rivals will be anxious to “knock us off our pedestal” ahead of the start of the Glen Dimplex All-Ireland Camogie Championship.<\/p>\n
The Tribeswomen won their fifth-ever All-Ireland camogie title last year, and their third in seven years, when they edged out Cork in one of the most exciting deciders of the past decade.<\/p>\n
Carrie Dolan’s last gasp free into the Canal End sealed it for Galway against a three-in-a-row chasing Cork, who had come strong in the final quarter.<\/p>\n
“Obviously, winning last year was unbelievable, but that’s very much in the back-burner for us,” Keane told RT\u00c9 Sport at the launch of the competition in Croke Park today.<\/p>\n
“It’s very much in the memory. We’ve very much the same team but we’ve new goals and new ambitions.<\/p>\n
“People are trying to knock you off your pedestal after you win an All-Ireland. But for us, the ambition doesn’t change. The goal doesn’t change.<\/p>\n
“We just want to win the All-Ireland. That’s our main focus. But before that, you have to win three out of three games in the group. For us, that’s the first ambition for the championship and we’ll see where we go from there.”<\/p>\n
Cathal Murray’s side have already claimed silverware in 2026, edging out Waterford by two points in the league final.<\/p>\n
There’s been a degree of turnover in personnel, with Emma Helebert, Shauna Healy and Siobhan Gardiner departing the set-up.<\/p>\n
“They’ve all stepped away this year,” says Keane. “But we’ve a few new girls, new young girls especially. Kerri O’Driscoll has come into the Under-23s and into our panel.<\/p>\n
“Niamh McPeake is back from injury as well, like myself. It’s good to be back and it’s good to have the few girls back. So, it’s been positive that way.”<\/p>\n
The 2026 championship has seen a format change. This year, the four semi-finalists from 2025 will be dropped into Group 1, from which the top two teams will progress directly to the All-Ireland semi-final.<\/p>\n
The third and fourth placed teams, meanwhile, will be placed in the quarter-finals where they face the top two sides from the six-team Group 2.<\/p>\n
Last year’s intermediate champions Offaly are in amongst that sextet, alongside Limerick, Dublin, Clare, Wexford and Kilkenny, the latter being All-Ireland senior champions as recently as 2022.<\/p>\n
Offaly’s Amy Byrne is hoping their experienced heads will help them make the step up.<\/p>\n
“We’d a few tough games last year. But the league this year really slapped us into reality that every game this year is going to be tough.<\/p>\n
“It’s such a step-up in standard, the physicality of every game. You don’t have a minute to think. When you have the ball, you have to think of the next thing.<\/p>\n
“But the likes of Orlagh Phelan, our captain of last year, and Mairead Teehan, who has played for I don’t know how many years now, they bring a wealth of knowledge to the team.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Galway’s Aine Keane is conscious that their rivals will be anxious to “knock us off our pedestal” ahead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-444410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}