Aoife Dillane on winning mind games to earn All-Ireland shot with Kingdom

The 2024 season had thrown in so differently for the Stacks defender. Now in her fourth season on the panel, she had made a positive start on the road to becoming a first-team regular. And first-team status was very much the individual goal.

Kerry won away to then All-Ireland champions Dublin on the opening night of the National League. Dillane started and finished the hour. Did well too. She was a content camper coming back down the motorway. That contentment was as short-lived as her time among the first 15.

“It just seemed to fall apart on my end then after that. Things weren't clicking. I knew myself that I wasn't training well,” Dillane reflects.

“We played Waterford in the second round and I definitely came off (after 47 minutes) a bit more deflated. It was a different type of game and I didn't feel I had as much of an impact on that game as I had the first.

“Then I very much got in my own head at training and was saying to myself, I didn't play well in that round, will I get game-time in the next round? It was a knock-on effect from there. I wasn't training well and if you are not training well, that is going to reflect your game-time.

“I know management rotate during the league, but I definitely wasn't happy with myself for the amount of game-time I was getting in the league.” 

The week after the league final she had a chat with the family. Two minutes across Kerry’s four final outings of the spring told her in almost deafening terms where she stood in the pecking order. Aoife Dillane couldn’t stay going as she was.

The teacher-training student was an overthinker who clung tight to every mistake. One spilt ball would play on her mind as the next opposition attack came into her orbit. One minute mistake was dictating and affecting her every subsequent move in training.

Arriving into Brosna, Currans, or wherever the Kingdom were gathering with a gear bag weighing heavily with college stress, she was heading back out the gate in even worse form. A vicious cycle spinning uncontrollably. She had no off button for it all, no capacity to compartmentalise.

And so the phone was picked up to Claire Thornton. A first step in attempting to turn her form and her season in the opposite direction from which it was travelling.

The pair devised strategies and techniques to enable her to land into training with a clear head and to go back out the gate the same way, irrespective of what happened in the interim hour or two. To be mentally present, to focus on what was directly in front of her, and to stop fixating on the rearview mirror.

“I said to her, I am not happy with how I am going. I just wanted to be back in the selection frame and be spoken about in selection meetings that Aoife went well this week or did that well.” A few days later, the phone was picked up a second time. An out-of-form player ringing their manager can be a daunting task. Dillane didn’t see it so. She was ringing someone she’d known since Darragh Long had coached her underage on the Austin Stacks field.

The phone call was essentially to ask management not to give up on her.

“I was ringing Darragh not to ask for advice or ask how I am going and what can I improve on. I rang him to say I know I am not going well, I want to sort it out, and I am working with Claire. I don't need you to tell me things aren't going well, but I am in the middle of trying to sort it all out and so don't write me off before Championship.

“We have a close relationship, so he was able to say to me, 'yeah, you are right, Aoife, you haven't been in selection contention'. When he said, ‘yeah Aoife, all these things you are saying is right’, that really solidified it for me that I am going to do the work on myself with Claire, and I am going to come to training every night with the blinkers on and nothing is going to get in my way.” 

Although she started only one of their subsequent Munster championship outings, her midweek contributions significantly improved. She left training knowing no forward who stood beside her had an enjoyable evening.

An injury to three-time All-Star Cáit Lynch opened up a slot in the half-back line for the All-Ireland series. A selection conversation took between management. Dillane had moved herself in from the wilderness, bypassed the suburbs, and was now in the centre of the selection conversation.

She was at left half-back for their All-Ireland championship opener away to Donegal in early June. She started each of their four subsequent outings. She sallied forward and kicked the opening goal of the All-Ireland final. She finished the season as an All-Star nominee.

“When I was named in the team for Donegal, I said to myself, you have done the hard work at training and on the psychology front, this is your break, but you need to take it to remain on the team.

“If you had told me this time last year when we were in pre-season mode that I would be starting in an All-Ireland final and we'd win, I would have just laughed. I don't think I'd have believed it. If you had said the same thing to me the week after the League final, my response would have been the same.

“I was just delighted to be in the thick of it on the day. A rollercoaster year. A dream.” 

A dream she took control of.