by Kevin Egan
After a seismic weekend where Waterford and Kilkenny kicked off the 2026 Centra Camogie Leagues by knocking over last year’s All-Ireland finalists, Waterford manager Michael Boland (above) and Galway’s Cathal Murray made it clear that the two south-eastern neighbours are very much in the All-Ireland conversation for 2026.
Waterford began the year with a 1-12 to 0-9 win over an admittedly understrength Cork side, prevailing thanks to seven points from Beth Carton and a stunning goal from Niamh Rockett.
The Déise broke new ground in 2025 by securing a championship win over Kilkenny and reaching the last four of the O’Duffy Cup race, and when asked about his team’s ambitions to build on that progress, Boland was in no doubt as to where the bar is for this Waterford panel.
“You ask any of them girls what do they want, they’d say a Celtic Cross, the same as any other group that goes out,” said the manager.
“The biggest problem for years was so much change going on, now hopefully there’s a bit more stability there, even with a few new girls in. These girls are ambitious, and no doubt their biggest thing is the Celtic Cross.”
In the shorter term, defending home soil was important to the group.
“It was imperative that we won today, because we’ve only two home matches and in this league it’s important that you pick up your home wins. We’ve got the two points, it takes that small bit of pressure off us leading into the next couple of matches.”
Kilkenny’s 2-11 to 1-13 win over Galway was arguably even more impressive, given that the Marble County travelled up to Duggan Park in Ballinasloe, they dominated the first half and then rallied again when Galway rattled off five points in a row to draw level with the wind behind them in the second half.
“Kilkenny needed that more than Galway did,” declared team selector Michael Walsh.
“It’s a new management team in there, they’re trained very hard since they came back and the players put in an outstanding effort – we were just looking for a performance, but to get the victory was great.”
Caoimhe Keher Murtagh scored the decisive goal with a superb finish early in the final quarter, and Walsh acknowledged that the UL student, a granddaughter of Kilkenny hurling legend Eddie Keher and talented to boot, has a lot of expectation on her shoulders.
“She wasn’t due to start, she’s been dealing with a bit of illness, but there was an injury there in the warm-up and she came in and played really well.
“She’s following in the footsteps of greatness and that’s not easy, but she’s carrying it well and hopefully there’s more to come from her.”
Walsh didn’t go so far as to say that Kilkenny are All-Ireland contenders, but Murray (below) was unequivocal on that topic.
“In the league you will have poor results and now it’s just about our reaction”
“Kilkenny deserved the victory in fairness, their level of performance was better than ours, we created enough chances but we didn’t take them.
“People are talking about Kilkenny as if they’re in the middle of rebuilding, I don’t buy that for a second. They had a really good minor team a few years ago that won an All-Ireland, they had a really good U23 team last year, they’ve got the players and they were very unlucky against Tipperary in the quarter-final last year, with new players in to boost them for 2026.”
Speaking about his own team, he said that the challenge was there to respond.
“It was a great start [referring to Carrie Dolan’s goal in the first minute] but we only added two points to it before half-time which was disappointing. The second half was really good, we had a very good third quarter, got back into a really good position and then they scored a goal.
“In the league you will have poor results and now it’s just about our reaction.”
It was much more straightforward in Cushendun where Tipperary prevailed by 2-19 to 0-9 against Antrim.
Strong performances from teenagers Isobel O’Donnell and Caoimhe Stakelum (who scored 1-4 from play) were among the highlights for manager James Heffernan, who wants to deepen his playing pool over the course of this league campaign.
“You try and win every game you play, but we need to strengthen out panel so we need to get game time into all the players,” said the new Tipp bainisteoir.
“We only had 26 out of the panel of 35 available this week but we’re okay with that, we’re trying to get plenty of strength into the panel and everybody who’s on this panel has something to add to the games. You’re not setting out to win the league, but you’re trying to give as good as you get in every game you play.”
Antrim’s ambitions are a little different, since they are in elite company for the spring in order to prepare for an assault on the intermediate championship in the summer.
“All I can ask of the team is to be competitive and to learn from playing against these teams,” said returning manager Elaine Dowds.
“We are new to this level, we don’t yet have the physicality that you see at this level and today is our first time on a grass pitch.
“I don’t want to sound as if I am making excuses. I was very happy with how the game was going in the first half. Then we got hit with 1-3 in the few minutes before half-time and it looks as if we were being overrun.
“We also started the second half well and we are up against a team that won the league two years ago, that regularly reach the All-Ireland semi-finals. They are much more experienced than we are.
“I would rather that we are playing at this level and learning from it. We will be sharping up our skills, sharpening up on everything we do. Because we want to be using that experience during the summer when we are competing in the Ulster Championship and the All-Ireland Intermediate.”
