A boom in
Ladies Football in South Belfast
When Down captain Jacqui Clarke raised
the All Ireland Junior Championship cup
towards the Croke Park skies in 1999,
little did she know that her team had
kick-started a boom in Ladies Football
in South Belfast.
Jacqui and five of her team-mates hailed
from the Bredagh club where there are
now two adult teams and five girls
teams. They have all been inspired by
the girls of '99 and by the youth
leadership of Monaghan's Belfast-based
Cera McArdle.
The result is that Bredagh Senior Ladies
currently top the Co Down League with a
one hundred per cent record and are
poised to lift the title after their
next game, at home to Castlewellan on
July 29th.
Co
Down Ladies Football Senior League
Bredagh 7 games 14 points
Bryansford 6 7
Castlewellan 7 7
Clonduff 7 7
Downpatrick 7 5
Loughinisland 6 0
The Bredagh Belles all-but sealed their
first title in four years when they won
a thrilling game at Downpatrick on
Saturday, June 30th. The margin was just
one point, 2-10 to 3-6, with Geraldine
Grimley kicking the winner. Bredagh's
squad was: Fionnuala McAtamney, Lisa
Kelly, Siobhan McCarney, Hannah Murray,
Grainne Hughes, Maura McArdle, Geraldine
Campbell, Arlene McCloskey (captain),
Catherine McGourty, Geraldine Grimley,
Maeve Gallagher, Emma Mulhern, Catherine
McAteer, Kerrie O’Neill, Joanne Lavery,
Cera McArdle, Cathy Gallagher, Lorraine
McCaffrey, Polly Moane, Jamie Willighan
and Nel O’Neill.
Emma Mulhern
Experienced
performers such as Joanne Lavery and
Siobhan McCarney now share centre stage
with up-and-coming youth stars like
Grainne Hughes (daughter of former Down
hurler Danny), Lisa Kelly and Emma
Mulhern (pictured above) who has broken
into the Down county panel.
The dramatic rise in interest in ladies
football Bredagh led to the formation of
a second adult team in 2005. They
entered the Junior League and duly won
it with a dramatic one-point victory at
Saval in the very last game. This year,
the team has carried it's good form into
the Intermediate League, winning six
games out of eight, despite suffering
from Saturday night clashes with senior
games.
GIRLS FOOTBALL
Further proof of the
Bredagh revolution was the prsence of
five girls in the Down team that
captured the Ulster B Championship on
June 17th in Tyrone. The famous five
were Nicole O'Connor, Cassie Moane,
Cathy Short, Sarah Montgomery and Ciara
McGuire, who have all come through the
ranks in the South Belfast Schools
League and on various Bredagh teams.
Teams like Bryansford have long-been the
standard bearers for girls football in
Down but Bredagh U-14s enjoyed a rare
victory over the Newcastle girls on June
25th, by 4-8 to 4-2 in a superb
encounter. It was Bredagh's seventh
victory in-a-row and qualified them for
the next stage in August.
Bredagh U-12s repeated this success by
qualifying for the Down Semi-finals with
victory at Castlewellan on Monday, July
3rd. Remarkably, it was their third
League win in just five days and was
thanks to emerging stars such as Julia
Hinds Alice McConville, Gemma Mullan,
captain Rachel Goldsmith, Sara McCoy and
Eadaoin Ni Chiarrain.
http://www.bredaghgac.com/2006Ladies/index.shtml
