NAOMH Pádraig Uisce Chaoin are progressing nicely and it’s a third final in as many years for the club.
Bernadette McKinney has been in charge of the team since they started up the team at the beginning of the decade along with her husband Brendan McKinney and they are helped out by Bernie Rutherford and Louise Quigley.
And with a Junior ‘A’ final on the horizon today, it has been an impressive climb for the Ture club since their formation of the ladies side.
“Myself and my husband have been involved from the very start, but I’m the boss!” McKinney joked.
“We started up the team about five years ago. Some players have moved on or stopped playing then a lot of younger girls have come up so we’re doing well for a club that’s only started a few years ago. We won the Junior ‘B’ two years ago and last year we won the Junior A Shield, now we’re in the Cup final so it’s progression and we’re doing good.
“We said at the start of the year, we have to go for the cup and to get anything less would be going backwards, even the cup semi-final would be where we wanted to be.”
This year didn’t start off as well as they would have liked however as they suffered relegation from Division 2 and were well beaten in their first championship game against Kilcar.
But while they drew with Naomh Columba, big wins over Robert Emmets and Urris saw them finish top of the group on points difference.
And a home semi-final against Glenswilly ended with a 3-10 to 3-7 win to bring them into the final.
“We didn’t have a great league so we didn’t know what way the championship would go but the girls were up for it and put the effort in and it has paid off.
“Again, it wasn’t the greatest start to the championship just with girls having different things on that weekend but we did alright against Kilcar and it did drive them on rather than knock them back.
“We were well ahead for most of the game but Glenswilly clawed it back and they could have took it but thankfully we got the win. We knew they wouldn’t be easy, we beat them once this year and they beat us once but we got off to a great start and we fell asleep for a while in the second half.”
Participation has been great at the club and it is dominated by youth, with plenty of quality in the likes of county minors Ava Walsh and Rhiana McColgan, while Niamh Harkin captained the Donegal minor ladies to All-Ireland ‘C’ glory last year.
And as they get ready to face a high flying Downings side in the final, there are no fears going into the game for McKinney and her side.
“The likes of Ava and Rhiana have moved up but they’ve been playing with the seniors for a couple of years then there are a few of the younger minors who are eager to get involved in the senior team and we wouldn’t turn them away.
“We had 38 players on the sideline and they all said they’d be there next week, a lot of them are minors and they’re training with us and they would be happy to play so the numbers are good.
“There are a couple of good girls coming through and the future is bright for the club, there’s not many you’d think would be retiring in the next few years
“We don’t know a lot about Downings, we played them in the championship last year over there and we gave them a good game, it was pretty close but we didn’t have many subs so they had fresh legs which won it in the end up so we were pretty evenly matched.”
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