Slevin: 'You put so much into it since you're four or five years old'

23-year-old Claregalway clubwoman starred at centre-forward against Kerry

By Kevin Egan

IN time, it’s likely to become one of the iconic images that will stick in the minds of every Galway supporter when they think of the 2026 All-Ireland senior final.

When Síofra O’Shea dropped her high, lobbing shot into the Galway square, it was carnage. A morass of bodies converged on the spot right on the goal line where the O’Neill’s was dropping to from the sky, and since she was reversing in from about eight metres out, Kate Slevin backed into one of her own players and was knocked to the ground.

Still on her knees, she looked up and saw Maggie Farrelly’s crossed arms to indicate a square ball, and her explosion of emotion, with two raised fists while still on her knees, almost inside the Davin End goal, was every bit as evocative an image as the ball sailing over the bar from Eva Noone’s winning score, or Kate Geraghty lifting the Brendan Martin Cup.

“To be honest, it was one of the weirdest feelings ever when the hooter went,” is how the 23-year-old centre half-forward remembers it.

“You can dream about winning it, but when it actually happens, it was nuts. I literally could not stop crying for, I would say, about 10 minutes there after the hooter. Honestly, it's unbelievable.”

And her memory of the big moment itself?

“I was kind of shouting around, looking for the tallest people I could to get in, because I knew they wanted to put into square, I was shouting for Siobhán Divilly but she was gone off at that stage.

“The ball was kicked in, I jumped and then it was gone behind me. And when I fell to the ground, then I saw that the ref had the square ball signal, her arms up. I didn't even watch it yet, I probably won't until the end of the week. But after the last three years, we finally had something go our way there. So I'm just delighted.”

Slevin had a dream start to the game from an attacking perspective, firing over Galway’s opening score after Hannah Noone devoured ground down the right flank to set up a close-range finish. After that, it was a contest full of tension and scrap, rather than an hour-long highlight reel, packed with wonderful scores and free-flowing football.

“We knew coming into it that Kerry would be very similar to us,” Slevin said.

“They've been racking up huge scores in the last couple of weeks, so I'd imagine they were thinking the same as us; keep it defensively strong and we'll score more, but it nearly turned into then two sides playing a bit defensive.

“It is frustrating. I want to play attacking football, but at the end of the day, it's an All-Ireland final, you do what you have to do to get over the line and everyone did that today.”

As it happened, Kerry centre-back Emma Costello was the driving force behind a lot of Kerry’s best transition play, while she also looked to get forward and get involved in the attack very frequently. But the nature of the game was such that Slevin was only one cog in the wheel when it came to curtailing those rampaging runs from the Kerry half-back line.

“I wouldn't really be like that, thinking in advance about who's going to be marking me, I just take it myself as it comes,” was how she described preparing for the matchup.

“I think of her powering up the pitch, but their whole half-back line would be very, very good at driving forward, so it was on all of us to be aware of it and share the workload between everyone. It wasn't just left to one person to deal with it today.”

Costello scored to pull Kerry back to just one point down coming up to half-time and a free from Síofra O’Shea then levelled the tie before the turnaround. But while Galway were up against the elements after the interval, Slevin felt that whatever they were facing in terms of wind could be balanced out and more so by Galway finding their own mojo.

“We weren’t panicking at all, we knew there was a lot more left in us,” was how she described the mood in their dressing-room at 4.50pm.

“Obviously, we just left a few scores behind us and going in the second half, it was really hard to get them scores when shooting into the Hill against the wind. But everyone trusts each other and we all work for each other. So we just knew, if we just kept chipping away and getting our scores, we’d get our chance to win it. You just have to make your attacks worth it.”

The scores dried up in the third quarter, but she never lost faith.

“It was just trying your best to keep your head, which I think the last number of years, in the last few minutes of the game, we were maybe, not losing the run of ourselves, but losing a bit of shape. I think we were all very much aware that if we kept your shape and stuck to the plan, it would work out, and thank God it has.”

Even at a young age, Slevin already has an impressive array of medals across several sports, winning League of Ireland and FAI Cup medals with Athlone Town. She featured for the club in the 2025 Champions League and also scored a crucial equalising goal in the 2023 Cup final against Shelbourne, with Athlone subsequently went on to win after a penalty shootout.

Yet even with a sporting CV like that, the connection with her home parish and county made last Sunday extra special for her.

“Winning the league and the cup with Athlone Town a few times, that was an unbelievable feeling, but I think winning with your county football, it was just so much more emotional for me today.

“You put so much into it since you're since you're four or five years old. I've been playing with some of these girls since I've been like 11, so it was just, it's much more of an emotional thing. You're playing with your clubmates, your family’s in the stands and everything. You can't really compare them because they're quite different, but yeah, today it was just definitely an emotional day.”

So is the possibility of multiple medals with Galway on the table, just as that 2023 Cup win for Athlone opened the floodgates for the midlanders?

“We've been there or thereabouts in a lot of big games over the last few years, and we just couldn't really get over the line when it really counted. So, I think today, hopefully, it just kind of lifts that mental block that a lot of people said we had.

“We knew we had the talent and the workrate this year, so we're just delighted to get over the line and hopefully it continues like this from here!”