By Katrina Brennan

SOME players freeze on the biggest stage of all and some players excel. Fermanagh forward Blaíthín Bogue has already shown that she has what it takes to perform at Croke Park.

In the draw 2022 All-Ireland final with Antrim, she kicked seven points. It was that very display that caught the watchful eyes of the Australian Football scouts and next Wednesday, when the All-Ireland final is done and dusted, Bogue will jet off to Australia as she embarks upon a career with North Melbourne Kangaroos.

Bogue has put her move Down Under on hold until her Erne commitments finished and the Tempo player is more than happy that they’ve managed to go the distance to the final day of the season;

“If we had of lost against Limerick I’d be in Australia already. Myself and Cadhla were like ‘we have to win’. I wasn’t ready to leave,” said the 23-year-old.

“It’s probably one of the most enjoyable years I’ve had with Fermanagh and I’d just love to top it off with a win.

“I’m excited when I think about it (going to Australia), but honestly, it’s just been quite a busy year and I’m just focusing on Fermanagh football at the minute. I’ve been kicking about with the Australian ball after my shooting practice with the Gaelic ball, so trying to balance both of them.

“It’ll be a good experience and sure we’ll see how it goes, if I don’t like it, I don’t like it and if I do, that’s all the better.”

Bogue has just her pharmacy pre-reg and will get the results of that in the next couple of weeks but for now her main focus is on Sunday’s decider against Louth.

“We’ve only lost one game this year, it was an important game, but I think we have to take the positives; that we have only lost one game and we’ve definitely learnt from the Carlow game.

“The Limerick game was very close and we were able to see that out whereas against Carlow we weren’t able to see that out.

“It’s something we’ve worked on between the first Carlow game and the Limerick semi-final and I think as a team we’ve grown from that loss but it has been going upwards from then.”

Bogue is now 60 minutes away from jetting off into the sun with a great big smile of success in her hand luggage if they come out on top against Louth but she knows it’s a massive task.

“They’re a big physical team,” she outlines, “they’re an athletic team as well. We haven’t played them in a couple of years.

“We played them in 2019 in Croke Park and they beat us quite well but I think we’ve a similar team to what we had then but we’ve all grown since then. I think we have developed as footballers since then.

“I quite like that it’s unknown, that we haven’t played them – they haven’t played us and that we’re underdogs and we’re happy enough to come in as underdogs because I feel all the pressure would be on Louth.

”They’re a division above us, they just got relegated last year. We’ve been knocking at the door a couple of years and we’d be happy enough to go in as underdogs.”