By DAIRE WALSH
While disappointment still lingers following their narrow TG4 All-Ireland senior football championship final defeat to Galway at Croke Park on August 2, Kerry netminder Mary Ellen Bolger was nevertheless pleased to pick up the ZuCar Golden Glove award for 2026 earlier this week.
Along with fellow custodians Grace Amos (London), 2025 winner Helena Cummins (Roscommon), Lauren Fitzpatrick (Tipperary) and Nicole Hanley (Carlow), Bolger was nominated for this annual prize – which honours top saves made by goalkeepers in the TG4 All-Ireland Championships.
Bolger was shortlisted for the close-range stop she made from Galway’s Kate Slevin in the second half of their nail-biting All-Ireland decider meeting last month, a contest that ultimately ended 2-7 to 0-12 in favour of the Tribeswomen. Just under 2,500 votes were submitted for the Golden Glove award this year and Bolger is grateful for the 732 she garnered from the public (putting her just 50 votes clear of the aforementioned Cummins).
“A nice one to get. Obviously disappointing to lose the All-Ireland. Individual things kind of come second to that, but nice especially because it was voted for. I’m sure a lot of players voted for that, so it’s a nice one to get,” Bolger explained.
“One of the other Galway players [Louise Ward] took a shot on goal that was blocked and then the deflection kind of went straight to Kate. She stepped one way and then stepped the other way, but thankfully I think it was my ankle I saved it with. Lucky save, maybe! My club and Kerry’s Instagrams kept reposting it to get people to vote. They made a big effort to get all the votes in.”
Interestingly, Bolger isn’t the first winner of this award to come from Kerry as Castlegregory’s Ciara Butler previously picked up the prize in 2024 for a save she made from Marion Farrelly of Meath in a TG4 All-Ireland senior football championship quarter-final held at Austin Stack Park in Tralee.
Throughout much of her time on the Kingdom panel – she first joined the set-up in 2020 – Bolger has enjoyed a healthy battle for the number one jersey with Butler. Whereas the latter started for her native county in three consecutive All-Ireland senior finals from 2022 to 2024, Mary Ellen was between the sticks for Kerry in Lidl National Football League Division 1 deciders at Croke Park in 2023, 2024 and 2025.
They largely shared goalkeeping duties in this season’s NFL with Bolger starting three of the Kingdom’s seven outings in the top-tier, before Butler was initially given the nod for their TG4 Munster senior football championship campaign.
Yet after making a late appearance in the wake of Butler picking up a yellow card in their provincial opener against Waterford on April 26, Bolger also came on as a substitute when her rival for a starting berth was forced off with an injury in their win over Tipperary a week later.
This subsequently led to her making a return as the Kingdom’s last line of defence and a series of strong performances helped Bolger to secure a recent TG4 All Star nomination alongside 11 of her inter-county colleagues.
“We’ve had a good rivalry over the years. We’ve kind of always shared game time in the league and then sometimes in Munster. Obviously the All-Ireland championship comes around then, so it’s who had done better overall. The last couple of years I’ve gotten picked,” Bolger said of her battle with Butler for a starting place.
“Ciara got the nod before that, but it just shows the standards that we have in the team that we’ve two goalies who are able to win awards like that [Golden Glove].”
Having finally gotten their hands on the Brendan Martin Cup again after a 31-year wait in 2024, Kerry’s defence of their All-Ireland senior title ended in a 2-12 to 1-9 defeat to Meath at the semi-final stage in the following season.
Considering this year saw them going a step further by returning to an All-Ireland SFC decider, Bolger views 2026 as a positive campaign overall.
“We only went one step further, but I think overall we were very happy with the way we played this year. We kind of stuck to our systems a bit more in the game plan and we were a bit fitter and stronger. A bit hungrier as well.
“A good year overall and obviously disappointing that it ended up the way it did, but last year we lost the semi-final and we just didn’t show up at all.
“Whereas the final this year went down to the wire and then we’d a great Munster campaign as well. Probably the most competitive province at the moment. It was great to win that as well. Overall, not the worst year.”
A graduate from the University of Limerick, Bolger – who picked up a PwC GPA Player of the Month award for May earlier this year – began working as a PE teacher in Dublin in recent weeks.
While this could lead to a tricky commute in the near future, the Southern Gaels goalkeeper already had a journey of approximately 90 minutes to collective Kerry training from her family home in Portmagee outside of the college year.
Given it is still a number of months until they return to competitive action, Bolger isn’t thinking about next year with Kerry just yet.
However, given they came so close to earning a second TG4 All-Ireland senior football championship in the space of three years last month, she is confident the Kingdom can compete at the business end of the competition once again in 2027.
“Not kind of thinking about it too much at the moment, to be honest. I think you do have to switch off after a season I think. Pre-season is still so far away that there’s no point thinking about these things really at the moment, but it will be doable,” Bolger added.
“Our starting 15 are more established players, but we’ve a lot of girls on the panel who have only maybe been here one or two years and who are still young. Just another year of experience of getting to an All-Ireland final will get them lots of experience and will improve them. We’ll be competitive next year again.”
