U19 Football Championship Semi-Final: Kilmainhamwood 3-13 Longwood 0-11

Longwood’s U19 footballers bid adieu to this year’s championship when they lost out to a strong Kilmainhamwood side on Sunday morning.

Despite the biblical rain of the preceding days, Kilmainhamwood’s pitch was in relatively good condition for mid-November and both teams served up an entertaining game.  

While Kilmainhamwood deserved their victory, the scoreboard flatters them greatly.  Longwood, despite missing a number of likely starters, played some excellent football and created at least five goal-scoring opportunities over the hour.  Alas, a combination of good saves, goalmouth scrambles and poor finishing saw the green flag remain redundant.  

Huge credit to our boys, all of whom gave their absolute all and many showed that they have the potential to be strong players for our adult teams in the coming years.  

The younger members of the team – Bo Connolly, Patrick Nicholson, Owen Byrne, Brooklyn O’Brien, Sean Kelly, DJ Feerick, Cian Swan, William Phillips and Joseph O’Neill – deserve special mention, as without them we would have been unable to field a team in this competition.  Far from making up the numbers, these boys made very strong contributions to the team and complemented their more experienced team mates to telling effect.

It was fantastic to see Adam Peacock, Malachy Fisher and Daniel Fahy back in the Longwood jersey and all carried a serious threat throughout the contest, particularly Fisher who registered an impressive 0-3 and caused endless problems for Kilmainhamwood with his powerful, direct running.  

Conor Dixon (both of them!) and Harry Leigh dictated much of the play and their combined sense of calm and assured, intricate passing helped create numerous scoring opportunities.  

A little more composure in front of the goals could have made a huge difference to the final score.  

But lots to be positive about and we look forward to plenty of these young players joining the senior panel in 2026 and beyond.  

Massive credit goes to Padraig Barron for pulling this team together.  While championship success proved elusive, the ultimate goal was to provide games for our younger players and put in place an important bridge between juvenile and adult football.  On that score, it was a resounding success.

Longwood:  Owen Byrne, Joseph O’Neill, Cian O’Sullivan, Patrick Nicholson, Adam Peacock, Conor Dixon (0-2), Brooklyn O’Brien, William Phillips (0-2), Harry Leigh (0-1), Sean Kelly, Conor M Dixon (0-2), Bo Connolly, Liam Foran, Malachy Fisher (0-3). Subs: Daniel Fahy (0-1) for William Phillips, DJ Feerick for Sean Kelly   

Maigh Dearmhaí abú!! 🤍🖤🤍🖤