St Brigid’s ladies keen to atone for last year
By Kevin Egan
St Brigid’s arrived in last year’s county final on the back of seven consecutive victories, the last six of those all by double figure margins. With a seven-point lead racked up by half-time against their old rivals from Clann na nGael, the county final looked like more of the same.
Fast forward through a remarkable half-hour and they had been torn apart, dismantled in a way that no-one thought possible. It defied explanation then; so ten months later, has Abby Curran been able to make any sense of what happened on that fateful Saturday afternoon in Ballyleague?
“I suppose when you look back and you go through it, Clann are a very experienced, older team who have had a lot of success in recent years, lots of girls on county panels and they would have played in several county finals,” says the club and county midfielder.
“You go through our team, there were ten girls that day on our team who were aged 20 and under. When Clann got on top, we just didn't really know how to deal with it,” Abby continued.
Curran is speaking in the showroom of Dermot Hughes Cars, sponsors of the 2025 Roscommon LGFA Senior Championship. It’s the height of summer, so as customers wander around to examine the range on offer, questions about storage capacity for holiday luggage can be heard to crop up.
Perhaps it’s an obvious reminder to ask the obvious question – are St Brigid’s carrying baggage of their own from that defeat, and if so, is it weighing them down, or are they bearing they type of all-weather gear that will take them through the next storm they encounter?
“We're definitely determined to get back there, but it won't be easy. If you dwell on one game too much, particularly a final, you could overlook how hard it will be to get back there, and we can’t think about making up for last year’s final until we earn our way there.
“St Ciarán's have come up from intermediate, Boyle have a lot of players back, Shannon Gaels gave us a great game last year and Dominic’s will be a huge battle in the first round, so we'll try and get over them first and take it from there.
“But all the girls are kind of back training, we’ve new management in this year with Niall Mackey from Moate in charge and the feedback has been really good from all the girls. The four of us that were in with Roscommon for the last couple of months haven't been around as much but everyone is really enjoying the whole set up.”
For Curran, the county campaign was a mixed experience. On a personal level, she became a regular at midfield, but relegation in the league and failing to reach a quarter-final meant that as a collective experience, it wasn’t what they would have hoped for.
“Yeah, it was obviously a very disappointing year. Getting relegated in the league was something we obviously didn't set out to do, but we were quite happy with some of our league performances. We played well in Tuam against Galway who were ten seconds away from getting to an All-Ireland final, we had very tight games against Donegal and Monaghan," said Abby, a daughter of former St Brigid's and Roscommon goalkeeper Shane Curran.
“It was fine margins. But new management, new game plans, a lot of new players and probably a good few girls like myself who wouldn't have played county in the last recent years, so that little bit of inexperience as well. We just have to park it and move on and look forward now to October to get going again."
Maybe with a happier club season with St Brigid’s under your belt? “Yep, definitely!”