BY RYAN FERRY
BRIAN Sweeney sees ‘good potential’ within the Letterkenny Gaels senior ladies set-up and that’s why he has taken on the managerial post this season.
Sweeney has done Trojan work at underage level for his club and is now enthusiastic about his next challenge.
He has formed a strong and varied backroom team with Conor Crossan, Diarmuid Ó Cathail, Annmarie Patton, John Doherty, Paul Cullen, Angela McGinley, Orla McElaney, Monica O’Connor, Liam McAlary and Nina Singaroyan all involved.
“I have been involved in the underage structures for 15 years and I was involved with the boys side of things first but I have two daughters (Anna and Eimear) coming through so I was helping Under 14, Under 16 and Minor girls teams over the last few years.
“Conor Crossan has a girl (Emily) coming through as well and when they advertised the job, they didn’t get a wild lot of interest in it, and myself and Conor said we would come in and take the team.
“We feel that team has good potential and maybe under-performing over the last number of years.
“We feel if we can bring our stamp to the whole thing that we might be able to have a bit of success with them.”
The growth of the LGFA has been a huge success story in Donegal over the last 15 years.
Gaels have laid solid foundations and are hoping to reap the fruits of their labour at senior grade.
“We put a development plan in place back in 2015 out at Lettekenny Gaels and part of that plan was to develop girls football.
“We had 12 girls at that time playing football across all age grades.
“Our senior ladies team at that time more or less disbanded because they couldn’t get the numbers out.
“Now we’re in a position where there are girls teams being fielded from Under 8s up to senior.
“The number of underage girls involved in football is over 40% of those participating at the Gaels.
“We would have a squad of forty girls with the seniors which includes seniors, under 18s and a few 16s.
“Without a doubt the growth in LGFA football over the last ten years has been phenomenal.
“We have a pipeline of girls coming through. In the Under 13 league, we fielded two teams just before Christmas under the guidance of Ursula Gallagher.
“We want to strengthen our senior set-up now and capitalise on the players coming through.”
The Gaels have put in a lot of effort to get ready for a tough league campaign and they got off to a super start last week with a 3-10 to 1-2 triumph over Sean MacCumhaills.
“They have restructured the leagues this year.
“There were three divisions but now there are four.
“We have ended up in Division 3 and that’s going to be very competitive because you have MacCumhaills, Glenswilly, Naomh Pádraig, Muff, Malin and St Michael’s,
“Glenswilly, Muff, and MacCumhaills are all competing in the Junior ‘A’ Championship for the last couple of years and St Michael’s won the Junior B last season so it will be very tough.
“We were beaten by Red Hughs in the semi-final of the Junior ‘B’ Championship last year.
“St Michael’s went on and won it and we had beaten them in the league in a very good game.
“The girls have been working hard since early January and we had a win over MacCumhaills on Sunday so we are off to a good start.”
Sweeney’s charges have another home game this Sunday as they host Glenswilly at Páirc na nGael at 10.30am.
“It’s a big local derby this week.
“We have had a lot of good battles with Glenswilly down through the years.
“I think Glenswilly were relegated last year but we played them the previous season and they had a lot of good players and there’s a huge amount of work being done at underage out there.
“It’s a good one for us. These are the kind of games you want because a lot of the girls know each other and would be at school together and the ATU and so on.
“It should be a good game hopefully.”