You can, after all, win things with kids. Just ask St Patrick’s Athletic. Come full-time in Sunday’s FAI Cup final, played in front of a record crowd of 43,881 at the Aviva Stadium, they had four teenagers on the pitch, all of them having played no small part in the 3-1 win over Bohemians. The team “returned to Inchicore with their fifth FAI Cup since 1959, a second in three seasons,” writes Gavin Cummiskey, “and a talented young gang that is the envy of every other club”.
At the end of a bad week for the FAI, with Sport Ireland freezing its funding because of a financialissue involving the CEO, Ken Early concludes that Irish football success happens despite its governing body, rather than because of it. And this final was one of those successes, rounding off a season that saw the League of Ireland prosper, the English Premier League’s TV popularity no barrier to its current growth.
In Gaelic games, Malachy Clerkin rounds up the weekend’s club action, his travels taking him to Newry, where he saw a Rory Beggan free deep into injury-time give Scotstown a one point win over Kilcoo. Denis Walsh was at the other end of the country to witness Castlehaven prevail over Cratloe, the football, alas, “ponderous and tortuous”. And in the Leinster hurling championship, Gordon Manning was in Carlow taking in O’Loughlin Gaels’ comfortable win over Mount Leinster Rangers, while Seán Moran saw Kilcormac-Killoughey enjoy an equally stress-free afternoon when they beat Naomh Éanna by 14 points.
Denis, meanwhile, writes about the threat to Cavan, Louth, Leitrim, Longford and Fermanagh’s places in the National Hurling League, with Central Council deciding next month whether they should all be excluded until they have at least five adult hurling clubs. He recalls going to see Cavan’s hurlers play Sligo nearly 30 years ago, 15 people, “a colony of die-hards”, turning up to watch the game. “This proposal,” he writes, “is an act of aggression against the precious spirit of these people. It must be stopped.”
In rugby, John O’Sullivan was at a rain-drenched Rodney Parade in Wales to see Leinster help themselves to a 33-10 victory over the Dragons, Dan Sheehan, Joe McCarthy, Ryan Baird, Ross Byrne and Jimmy O’Brien all back on duty after the World Cup. And he heard head coach Leo Cullen say that he’ll be able to call upon even more of Leinster’s World Cup contingent for their next game, at the RDS on Saturday evening. Not good news for their opponents, the Scarlets.
TV Watch: It’s a quiet enough TV evening on the sporting front, but you can catch up on the weekend’s GAA club action on TG4 (8pm-9pm) and Against the Head will have a rugby round-up on RTÉ 2 (8pm-9pm).
