Lucan Sarsfields celebrate after defeating Clontarf 1-14 to 1-12 in St Anne’s Park to claim the club’s first-ever Division 1 Minor LGFA Championship title
Lucan Minors make history
LUCAN Sarsfields Minor LGFA side have won the Division 1 Championship following a two point win over Clontarf last weekend with the final score reading 1-14 to 1-12 at St Anne’s Park, reports Michael Howley.
It was a very competitive game between the two sides with both teams unbeaten this year heading into the fixture.
It was Clontarf who got the better of the game throughout the first half and Lucan found themselves down by three points at the halftime break.
The second half would see them crawl back in front after a goal supplemented with a few points early on but the teams went tit for tat for the remainder of the contest with Lucan prevailing through a rally late on.
Scorers in the game included Eva Collis, Grace Birch, Sadhbh Lynch and Chole Doyle with Sienna Hanson captaining the team to the club’s first ever Division 1 Championship Ladies Football title.
Coach Oliver Ryan touched on the win and what it meant to the team.
“There was an element of shock that we did it, when it settles down you start to recognise that we went unbeaten and won the league and championship. It’s only sinking in now what we’ve achieved. It’s absolutely incredible. The girls have been sensational, did everything that was asked of them and more. Absolutely delighted for them more than anything else.”
Playing in Division 2 at the start of the year, the side quickly found that they were capable of great things, though going the year unbeaten and winning a Division 1 Championship wasn’t on the radar at the beginning of 2026.
“We didn’t [expect to win], I knew we had potential and we had a strong spine.
‘The thing we had to think about was bringing up girls who were playing Division 4 last year with the girls who were on our Minor B team last year.
‘The question was could we integrate them because some of them didn’t even know each other.
‘Integrate them and turn them from a group into a team, then can we develop their skills and create the environment where they can thrive and get the most out of themselves.”
“I think after we won the league we began to rest our ambitions after that as we blitzed through it.
‘We got girls back who were involved with Dublin Minor teams and we suddenly started looking at the squad through a very different lens.
‘Our first game in the championship was against Kilmacud Crokes and we knew they were very strong.
‘It was our only home game in the group and we knew we had to win it.”
“We were down by seven or so in that match and we caught them with seven or eight minutes to go and kicked on.
‘Once we got over that we started to have more belief that we could go a bit further in this.
‘We got a win over Cuala and a draw against Sylvesters who were also extremely strong.
‘Then we really started to believe, when we topped the group that’s when we put the focus on winning the whole thing and thankfully we did.”
The side worked extremely well as a unit and utilised a variety of different training techniques to their advantage.
‘That includes a heavy emphasis on statistics and tactics following games spearheaded by Jessica Fitzgibbon who put her analytical talents to use and played a key role in developing the squad’s style of play.
Now with minor trials for next year’s side set to take place over the coming weeks and several members of the team being put forward for intercounty selection, Lucan Sarsfields can be delighted that their women’s sections across both Football and Camogie have extremely bright futures following this double Division 1 Championship winning year.
