Ireland’s best St. Mary’s head for international soccer tournament
By Thomas Conway
Having conquered Ireland last spring, St. Mary’s Secondary School, Nenagh are now setting their sights on an international competition in the form of the Rod Houston Cup - an annual schoolgirls under-14 soccer showcase staged in at the Lilleshall National Sports Centre in Shropshire, England, featuring teams from across Ireland, England, and Wales.
St. Mary’s secured qualification to the prestigious Home Nations tournament following their FAI Schools First Year Girls National Cup final triumph in May. The North Tipp school brushed aside Loreto College, Kilkenny, 3-0, to land a much coveted national title, following a lengthy seven-game campaign in which they also became Munster champions.
This particular event, organised by the Schools Association Football International Board (SAFIB), is designed to promote schoolgirls football, expose players to an elite-level playing environment, and act as a shop window for scouts and professional clubs seeking to recruit to their academies.
Over the past two successive years the competition has been won by Galway schools - Salerno Secondary School, Salthill claimed the title in 2024, while Presentation College, Athenry took top honours in 2023.
This year’s competition features two teams from Wales, on account of the fact that Northern Ireland opted not to put forward a team. The competition runs on a round-robin structure, with each of the four teams playing one game per-day. Whichever team tops the group at the end of the three-day tournament is deemed the winner.
St. Mary’s will begin their campaign next Monday against Welsh outfit Stanwell, before a Tuesday clash with Caerleon, another Welsh school located northeast of the city of Newport. Their final fixture will see them take on English side Surbition.
Manager Jill White - who, with help of coach Shane Doherty, guided St. Mary’s to that national title remains very much at the helm. She says the players have assumed a “celebrity status” around the school in the build up to this tournament, and that the squad intends to relish the experience to the fullest extent. Soccer is now “trendy” in St. Mary’s, she says, so much so that it is even beginning to outrank camogie as the school’s number one sport.
“We’ve huge numbers taking part in soccer in the school as it is, and I nearly dread to think how many are going to show up to first year soccer training in the next few weeks,” she revealed.
“We’re a big camogie school as well but soccer might have taken over now in terms of the number of girls playing. One of the reasons is there are loads of clubs in the area. There are four or five different clubs that our team pulls from alone. That definitely wasn’t there when I was growing up. The soccer culture is very strong here, in the area in general.”