The Downings ladies are looking to do what no Donegal club have come close to before at Junior level today as they take to Parnell Park for the All-Ireland Junior final (throw-in 2pm) against Limerick side Mungret St Paul’s.
It’s been a long year for Barney Curran’s side but in his first season in charge alongside Dominic McGroddy, they have taken the team to the Donegal Junior ‘A’ county title and the Ulster title. And Curran feels his side are hungry for one more piece of silverware.
“Everybody is on a high, there are texts and calls coming every day and someone text me saying ‘You’re the team that just keeps giving’.
“We’ve done an awful lot of work, training three or four times a week the last month and we will ease off this week but we have really went at this with intensity and if you’re training with that intensity then when you come up against teams you’ve never played like Kilcock (in the semi-final) then the training stands to them.
“We met in the second week in February and we started the third week with 36 players at training. Luckily enough we’re still getting 21/22 at training midweek even when you have girls at college so the interest and hunger they have kept has really driven us on.”
Curran has been part of the management of Donegal ladies teams who won Junior and Intermediate All-Irelands, but he feels this achievement, with his local club, would top the lot.
“As a manager this year it’s a completely different outlook.
“I told the girls ‘enjoy the build-up, this means the world to this wee parish and you might never play in something like this again so embrace it.’
“The word is that the last person out of Downings is to turn off the lights and close the gate. There sounds like a lot are going and a lot of families are making a weekend out of it so hopefully we can cap it off with a win.
“But honestly if we win this, it would be one of my greatest achievements and a lot of the girls will be in that boat. I’m about football long enough to know you don’t get to these stages many times.”
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