Down Memory Lane

Dunmore Town Girls U12 Reach National 7- a-Side Semi – Finals, 2005

Well done to Dunmore Town Girls U 12’s soccer team who  reached the semi final stages of FA Ireland’s National 7 A side  competition held last Sunday in Athlone.

 Lodged in the middle of a veritable “group of death” that contained some of the big names in Girls soccer in Ireland – Salthill Devon( defending champions),Lifford from Ennis and  Beal Na Mulla from Athlone, conventional wisdom suggested that the recently formed Dunmore Town Girls would be one of the early casualties of the competition. At 12.30 pm on Sunday 2^nd October 2005 the Dunmore girls ran out onto Pitch No 2 in One Direct park Bealnamulla, Athlone.For the next three hours and four games later they were pitted against the finest Under 12 girls soccer teams in the country. They qualified from their group along with Lifford and were drawn to meet Malahide in the semi final.

Dunmore got off to a flier with a deflected goal inside two minutes and stoutly defended that lead until half time. A second half onslaught by the physically stronger Malahide side yielded two goals and despite a brave fightback from Dunmore in the dying minutes of the game the Dublin held out to win by the narrowest of margins . Well done to Caroline Shally,Lauren Warde,Nicola Kilgarriff,Fiona Comer,Shauna Quinn,Anne-Marie Fahy,Jennifer Finnegan,Paula Kelly ,Sarah O’Toole and Ciara Bowens and to Eileen Bowens ,team manager. Once again a big thank you to all the parents,family members,team selectors and Dunmore Town AFC for their massive support on the  day.

Brian Keating