Duff hoping to make amends for last year's disappointment

At the start of this year Orlaith Duff and her colleagues on the Meath ladies football team set out to achieve a number of objectives; targets they had set themselves.

One was to win the NFL Div 3 title. They did that, landing a first piece of national silverware in 24 years in the process. Next up was the Leinster championship. They got to the final only to lose to Wexford.
Not to worry. The attitude was that they had to dust themselves off as quickly as possible and push on and have a go at winning the All-Ireland IFC. 
They're still on course to do just that with Tipperary awaiting at Croke Park on Sunday. Not that it's just another 
game; this a real shot at redemption for Duff and her colleagues. 
A primary school teacher in Stamullen, Duff was on the Meath team that lost to Tyrone in last year's IFC final at HQ - so she knows all about the pain of falling at the final fence on the big day in the Big House. Now she's determined to use last year's chastening experience - her first outing at Croke Park - as a stepping stone to success this time around.
"Croke Park is unlike anywhere you've ever played before," says points out. "The noise level, everything is just at another extreme, even down to hearing, or not hearing, instructions from the sideline, or what the referee is saying. It's just something you have to get used to and we're very fortunate that this year we get another shot at it, many teams don't get another chance."
The 25-year-old Dee Rangers player feels that last year she got caught up too much in the razzmatazz of it all; the occasion. Consequently she didn't perform as well she could have. The same could be said for the entire team.
"I probably did think too much about the game, went into it all too much, but at the end of the day it's just another game and that's the way I will approach it," says Duff who made her senior Meath debut at 17.  She dropped off the radar for a few years to focus on her studies before she returned last year. 
"This time I think I will just go for it a bit more, not be afraid to make mistakes because mistakes will happen no matter what. You have to go out there and say this is just another game of football, the game you've played since 
you were seven or eight at Syddan.
"It's a big game, a big pitch but it's still essentially the same game. I think if I'm playing I'll just go out and go for it."
Duff was one of the Meath players at the team's 'Meet & Greet' evening at Dunganny recently; a well-oganised, successful event that attracted a big turnout. The players were there, of course, but so was a sizable contingent of supporters. Some were youngsters harvesting autographs, others were Orlaith's parents Mairead and Tom Duffy, although to most people her mother will be instantly recognisable as Mairead McGuinness, the vice-president of the European Parliament. 
Having seen politics "from the inside" Orlaith has no plans to follow that path. "I'll stick with teaching," she adds with a smile. 
Both Mairead and Tom are expected to attend Sunday's final - and in the interview with the Meath Chronicle daughter Orlaith allowed herself the indulgence of imagining what it would be like to defeat Tipperary and look up in the stand and see her Mum and Dad beaming back at 
her. 
Not that she allowed herself to hold that image for long. She knows a great deal of hard work has yet to be done to overcome the Premier County. Not that she and her team-mates are afraid of hard graft. Instead, she insists, that willingness to toil and work  is one of the chief reasons why Meath are on the cusp of a major success. 
She points to the "countless" hours the players have put in from the start of the year adding extra gym work to their regular training sessions. "It's about putting in the hours, being the best you can be, everybody has to buy into that from day one, that's what you have signed up for and every single girl on this Meath panel has bought into that."
She insists Meath just weren't themselves when they were trounced by Tipperary (1-14 to 6-10) in the first round of the All-Ireland qualifiers in July at Ardfinnan. They'll be better on Sunday. Better prepared to achieve another goal in what is turning out to be a memorable year for the Meath ladies footballers - and Orlaith Duff.