St Mary’s Girls aiming for National Soccer glory

By Thomas Conway

St. Mary’s Secondary School, Nenagh will battle it out with Loreto College Kilkenny in the FAI Schools First-Year Girls Final this Thursday, May 22nd, in Cahir Park AFC, at 1.00pm.

The decider is being billed as a David versus Goliath tussle - Loreto is twice the size of St. Mary’s, and is generally regarded as a formidable soccer-playing school. But anticipation has been building in Nenagh for the past several weeks, since the team’s impressive All-Ireland semi-final victory over Presentation College, Athenry.

Manager Jill White is optimistic about the side’s prospects. The girls have been tested rigorously over the course of the past few months, she says, playing a number of high-quality sides and coming out on top on each occasion.

“We played the Ursuline Thurles in the first round and beat them 1-0. Then we played Ballincollig Community College in the second round. They came to us from Cork, and we beat them 4-0. We then played Presentation Thurles in a local derby and came out on top 2-1. The Munster semi-final then was against Laurel Hill, inside in Limerick, and that was tight, 1-0 after extra-time. The Munster Final was St. Brigid’s from Killarney, and that was 3-1. And then we had our All-Ireland semi-final against Pres Athenry, and that was 1-0,” she revealed of their route to the final.

The group has benefited from a general across-the-board elevation in playing standards in North Tipperary in recent years. Emerging talent academy systems for both boys and girls have brought players to a new level in terms of skill and understanding, and this effect has fed right through to the schools.

Jill says that her and her coaching ticket - which includes long-time St. Mary’s soccer stalwart Shane Doherty and enthusiastic fellow coach Eamonn Morrissey (who only arrived in the school last September) - have been able to encourage the players to play a fast, free-flowing game that relies on skill and precision.

“Ten out of sixteen girls on the squad, play with North Tipp,” she revealed.

“I must give a lot of the credit to North Tipp and their coaches, because those players came to us playing exceptional football. The team as a whole, they all play proper heads-up football - looking up all the time, finding each other, crossing it, passing it, changing direction, really keeping teams guessing all the time.”

Jill also pays tribute to the team’s playing intelligence, in particular referencing their tactical awareness and the fact that many of them regard soccer as their biggest sporting priority.

“They’re a very clever team as well,” she pointed.

“We have tactics, we have plays, the players are really thinking every move through. And they come to us with great ideas too. You can actually tell that they love soccer and that they’re really interested in it. For the majority of them soccer would be their number one sport.”

Win or lose on Thursday, the very fact that St. Mary’s have reached this stage of the competition is a testament to the players and the coaching team, but also to the overall sporting ethos of the school. Jill explains that the school actively promotes involvement in sport, and offers a wide range of different codes, from soccer and camogie to athletics, swimming, and hockey.

“We’re an all-girls school and both management and staff are big into trying to get the girls playing and keep the girls playing,” Jill explained.

“There’s such a massive drop-off often in the teenage years, but we don’t have that in our school. We really try to give them every opportunity to get involved in something because look, if you can’t see it you can’t be it and the more they see each other excel and play, the more they’ll want to play themselves.”