St Finian's 1-14 Erin Go Bragh 4-3
Cup Final, Wednesday August 31, 2022
By Buzz Lightyear
Our ladies side added the Cup to last year's Championship triumph after a blood, sweat and tears battle with Erin Go Bragh on Wednesday evening.
Once again, the luck of the draw (and the benefit of having a superb playing surface) was with us and we were able to enjoy the home comfort of our pitch in Newcastle for our latest big night.
It had been a long road to get here, with the ladies playing their initial Cup group games way back in March when the season was in its infancy.
Our first Cup fixture of the season was a rematch of last year's Championship final. St Finian's versus Lucan Sarsfields. Same pitch. Same result. A win for the Newcastle ladies, this time on a scoreline of 2-11 to 0-6.
The following week, our ladies travelled to play Cuala and came away with five points to spare for a 1-17 to 2-9 victory. Played two, won two. So far, so good.
Our third game of the group stages did not quite go according to plan. A tough day at the office on our pitch against St Kevin's/Killian's left us with a best case scenario of finishing second in the group to the Kilnamanagh girls and meant if we were going to get our hands on that Cup, we'd have to do it the hard way with an away draw in the semi-final - if we made it that far!
A walkover against St Mary's and a comprehensive win over a youthful Ballyboden side meant we were indeed into the knockout stages. A Wednesday trip to North County Dublin awaited with a Man O War team we had already played twice this season - splitting the encounters at one win apiece.
A fabulous second-half comeback saw our girls turn a seven-point deficit into a nail-biting two-point win. Goals from Abbie Nulty-Haughan, Norah Harney and Jean Brennan went a long way to getting us over the line on the night and the impact of Grace Lanigan off the bench was a sign of things to come for the decider a week later. Final score: Man O War 2-10 St Finian's 3-9.
And there we found ourselves, in another final and against a side we have enjoyed many a contest with in recent years, Clonee's Erin Go Bragh. The league game between the two sides had gone our way earlier in the season, but the fact EGB had edged St Kevin's/Killian's by a point in the semi-final left our ladies in no doubt that they had a battle on their hands.
And a battle is what it turned out to be. The final itself proved a wonderful advertisement for ladies football, with St Finian's somehow hanging on in a heart-stopper for a two-point win and another Cup to add to a steadily growing collection. A good honest contest between two tough sides.
The first half didn't quite go to plan - unless you were from Clonee. Despite enjoying more than their fair share of possession, our normally reliable shooters couldn't quite find the mark. No panic, we'd been down this road before.
Erin Go Bragh, similarly to their semi-final win, went in search of goals and managed to nick two before half-time - one from the penalty spot. At the tea break, it read St Finian's 0-5 Erin Go Bragh 2-2.
"The 10 minutes after half-time, you blitzed them. That was the winning of it," a clubmate reckoned afterwards. He wasn't wrong. Erin Go Bragh got their final point of the game shortly after the break but from there, the St Finian's forwards remembered what they do best - and the scores followed.
Lanigan had scored a point with her first touch having been introduced just before half-time. She added two more in the second half along with that all-important goal with a tidy finish at the keeper's near post.
The introduction of Sienna Flynn after her month-long warm-weather training camp in Spain (Hazel McGarry had hers in Rush. Wasn't as warm) gave us another ball-carrying outlet and she added a pair of fantastic points for good measure, giving us a contribution of 1-5 from the bench that the visitors couldn't match.
In midfield, the tireless Aoife Cafferty saw every blade of grass on the pitch on her way to collecting her first bit of silverware since joining us at the start of the season. Beside Cafferty, Gemma Kilduff kept her scoring rate set to 'high' with four points from play, including one peach of a strike in the second-half.
In goal, Mairead Murphy was finding her mark with her kickouts and Sara Phelan was hunting any loose ball she could find around the middle third of the pitch. McGarry wore out the sideline at wingback while Norah Harney nicked a pair of vital scores from her spot on the edge of the Erin Go Bragh square.
On the wing, Carrie Begley earned herself a spice-bag with a massive display in the No10 jersey while Nulty-Haughan won plenty of ball throughout a tough contest. As always, at centre-forward, the unrushed Jean Brennan made it look easy and had three points chalked beside her name when all was said and done.
At the back, Tara Roche (pink hair, don't care) had both hands full with the visitor's talented full-forward and she was ably assisted by Katie Harney and Dr Catherine Scott MD on either side of her.
Needless to say, Cups are rarely won easily and EGB were not prepared to head back up the M50 without a fight. They managed to grab two more goals to ensure the two teams battled to a standstill right up to the end of 10 (!) minutes injury-time.
Finally, however... that final whistle arrived and our fantastic captain Sarah Mulhere was able to summon up just enough energy to accept the Cup and usher in a solid seven renditions of B*Witched's 'Cést La Vie' up in Annie May's later that evening.
The wheel keeps turning, however. Our ladies team have three League games left to play. Next stop, Cuala away on Wednesday September 7.
ST FINIAN'S: Mairead Murphy; Katie Harney, Tara Roche, Catherine Scott; Kacey Galvin. Sarah Mulhere, Hazel McGarry; Aoife Cafferty, Gemma Kilduff 0-4; Carrie Begley, Jean Brennan 0-3, Louisa Fallon; Abbie Nulty-Haughan, Norah Harney 0-2, Sara Phelan. Subs: G Lanigan 1-3 for Fallon, Sienna Flynn 0-2 for Galvin, Ciara Fitzgerald for Nulty-Haughan, Therese Guthrie for Scott, Steph Moonan, Kathleen O'Connor, Samantha O'Keeffe, Kelly Rossiter, Chloe Flanagan, Caoimhe Murphy.
