A weekend I will always remember!
Luke’s delight at Féile win
ON Friday, June 24, the Eire Óg Greystones Under-14 football team headed off to Kerry to participate in Division 4 of the national Féile.
The team, and our three mentors, Maurice Prendergast, Peter O’Neill and Tadgh Shanahan, had put in a lot of hard work and preparation for this special weekend.
We left Greystones on a bus full of craic at 9am on Friday morning and we were heading for Killarney to be hosted by Kilcummin GAA Club! We could not have asked for a better club. The hospitality was fantastic and every host family were extremely welcoming.
I was hosted by the O’Brien, a family of six, and their own Kilcummin player Killian. They were all very nice and made us feel at home and were very talkative and friendly.
They had us up in time every morning with a lovely breakfast cooked for us and hot showers. They got us to the club for our matches even when their own club were not taking part. The whole family even travelled around the county to our matches to support us on a very special weekend.
We qualified top of our group into the quarter-finals of the cup competition with strong wins over Beaufort and Kilcummin and also a draw against North London our rivals for the weekend.
Our quarter-final was played in the Dr Crokes ground in Killarney, home of the ‘ Gooch’ where we faced a local Kerry side, Kenmare. We had a tense first half but went in at halftime leading by two points thanks to a late goal. The second half we came through strongly thanks to great overall attacking and defending play from everyone.
The semi-final was sure to be a very tough game for us although as we had seen from previous results our Monaghan opposition were a very talented side.
We got off to a great start with early scores from the forwards, but Donaghmoyne hit back strong with two quick goals.
We were against the wind in the second half so we had it all to do, but another super performance from our back line and goalkeeper kept us ahead and got us into the final against our friends, North London.
In this final game we really showed what we were made of and really put in a very good performance from everyone across the pitch with the game finishing 1-8 to 0-4 in our favour. We were champions!
A very big thanks to our club and mentors once again for working very hard and supplying all the gear and made it a weekend to remember, but especially to our host club Kilcummin and my host family the O’Brien’s.
I really enjoyed my weekend with them and appreciate all their support they gave us each day, everyone in the family were so kind and helpful to us all.
Our squad for the weekend was: Sean O’Neill, Cillian Keane, Neil Browne, Freddy Happonen, Joe Power, Thade Shanahan, Indi Kenny, Eoin O’Neill, Conor Fulham, Toby Owens, Jack O’Sullivan, Daniel Healy, Joseph Prendergast, Cian Hynes, Luke Dorgan, Fionn Brauner, Oisin Cavanagh, Charlie Leahy, Colm Shortt, Joshua Rush, Aaron Bailey, Patrick Byrne, Oisin Shanahan, Max Scully.
By Luke Dorgan.