Scoil Aoife celebrate their FAI Schools league final win over Divine Word
Scoil Aoife girls go from strength to strength
SCOIL Aoife have had great success in recent years with the girls football team impressing. After being set up in 2022.
When the team was established none of the girls involved had been playing for a team of any kind.
We spoke to one of the coaches of the team Paul O’Brien who informed us of how the team has just gone from strength to strength since forming.
“In the first year I think we came second, and the second season which was last season we just kept on building, building and building and they actually won their league last season and got to the quarter final of the cup as well. This year they’ve built on that success again.”
The format to the FAI schools league changed this year and saw the league winners go on to play each other in a series of playoffs. Scoil Aoife managed to overcome St Marys SNS Rowlagh in the semi finals with a 1-0 victory before meeting Divine Word from Marley Grange in the final of the league play offs.
It was a hugely competitive affair with the match 0-0 after the prescribed gametime.
Extra time would prove to be the difference maker with Scoil Aoife managing to score a winner and emerge victorious.
As well as winning their league and league playoffs the girls also made it to the semi final of the Junior Cup where they would narrowly miss out on another final losing 1-0 to Gaelscoil Colmcille.
Paul O’Brien reflected on how impressive the achievements of the team had truly been.
“Even at this stage there are only three of the girls who play for clubs now.
‘They just do it for the craic. We are trying to encourage them to join clubs because it’s a good team.
‘Unfortunately a lot of them are going into secondary school now so we will need to rebuild for next season. One of the girls in particular never played football competitively before but she’s playing for Rovers now, all in the space of three years.”
“We brought hundreds of students to that final, they really are an inspiration to the rest of the school, especially all the young girls coming up. They all want to be on the team next year now.”
O’Brien spoke about the difficulties of keeping the girls playing football in the future and issues with girls in sport overall.
“That’s the problem with girls sports in general, it’s great for the underage up to around 13 and then girls football generally disappears.
‘It’s not as readily available as boys football. Look at Tallaght or any community around the country there’s loads of boys football teams but there aren’t as many opportunities for the girls to maintain at that level. They just need additional funding.”
