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Meet the remarkable sporting history-maker Mary Geaney

"I was delighted to see Cork winning. If Kerry are not in the All Ireland and winning it, I'd be ...



Meet the remarkable sporting h...
Football

Meet the remarkable sporting history-maker Mary Geaney

"I was delighted to see Cork winning. If Kerry are not in the All Ireland and winning it, I'd be always be delighted to see Cork winning it. They were good to me as well." 

While much of the coverage after the All Ireland camogie final three weeks ago suggested that Cork star Rena Buckley was the first player to captain a team to both camogie and Ladies football All Irelands, in fact someone else had achieved that feat previously.

Kerry born Mary Geaney has had a remarkable sporting career across both codes as well as field hockey internationally - and not to forget golf in recent years - and she had the pleasure of earning silverware.

In football, she led Kerry to All Ireland glory and for Cork, multiple camogie titles.

This week, she joined Cliona Foley on Off The Bench to talk about the length and breathe of her career:

Meet the remarkable sporting history-maker Mary Geaney

00:00:00 / 00:00:00

"A few people got onto me there. Marty Morrissey was on the telly doing the commentary on it and he made reference a couple of times to the fact that Rena was going to become the first person to captain camogie and Ladies football All Irelands when in fact that wasn't the true fact. I suppose it was me," said Geaney of how she was informed about how history was being reported around the camogie final. 

The difference was Buckley achieved the feat with one county while Geaney's success came with Cork and Kerry.

"I suppose I started off with the football because we had camogie here in Castleisland. A garda came into the place and set up the camogie club and we played camogie for a good while but unfortunately it became slightly defunct in Kerry and all the girls started playing football through carnivals and just through inter-club matches and that's where football got going," she said of that time in the early 1970s when she began a career that earned her three All Irelands with Kerry plus one with the club, before adding multiple camogie titles with Cork.

But unlike the current Ladies football championship, finals did not take place in Croke Park.

"I never played Ladies football in Croke Park," she said, explaining that deciders took place in other parts of the country.

You can listen to the full interview on the podcast player above.

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