Lot of learnings to take from All-Ireland final, says Olivia Divilly

For Olivia Divilly, it has been quite the 12 months for club and county when it comes to All-Ireland finals.

For Galway, Olivia was a key part of the Galway team who reached their first All-Ireland final in five years, as they shocked reigning champions Dublin and won a Connacht title on route to Croke Park.

However, it was not to be as they came up short to a Kerry side determined to end an All-Ireland drought of their own.

While Galway will have to wait for their first All-Ireland title since 2004, Divilly is confident the team will learn from this year and take the positives into 2025.

"There is a lot of positives to take from it. It was the first All-Ireland final in five years, and it was a year that we had a lot of transition with players.

"There is so much learnings to take from it, the positives mixed in with the negatives as well. There was a lot of girls that got game time and played in big occasions.

"When we played Dublin in the All-Ireland quarter-final, we had eight substitutions by the end of extra-time, so to have used 23 girls in an All-Ireland quarter-final, that is very valuable with players in those big moments and being able to hold their own was great."

At the beginning of the year, the idea of Galway being contenders for the All-Ireland looked somewhat unlikely.

A difficult league campaign with players missing and close defeats, a change in approach paid off in the championship.

"In the league, we were the wrong side of a lot of games. The most we lost any game by was four points., there was a lot of one point defeats, two point defeats.

"We were very disappointed with our own game management, we weren't seeing games out, we were giving teams opportunities at the end of games.

"That was something