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Mairead Farrells

Sports

Up the Mairead Farrells

Sinead Fegan, Niamh McGowan, Laura McGillion, Adele Gallagher and Orla Fegan. (Photo by Peter McDermott)

It was a tougher fight this time around, but Philadelphia’s own Mairead Farrells are back from the North American Gaelic Athletic Association finals with their second-in-a-row ladies senior football championship.

The locals beat Boston’s talented Tir na nOg team 3-9 to 3-7 in the Labor Day weekend finals, having previously edged out San Francisco’s home team, the Fog City Harps, in the semi-finals.

Angela Mohan, the Mairead Farrells’ coach and manager, said she wasn’t surprised at the tight margin of success in the city by the bay. “The teams knew we ran away with it last year,” she said, “so it was very close this year.”

In the semi-finals, the outcome hinged on the outcome of a penalty shot in the final five minutes of the game. “Ciara Moore (the team captain) nailed it,” said Mohan. She converted the penalty, which helped us to go on and win that game.”

In the finals, Mohan acknowledges that the win was truly a group effort, but she credits goalkeeper Desiree DeBaldo for her fierce defense. DeBaldo is a longtime soccer player (she played for the University of Scranton), and Mohan says her mental toughness helped win the day. “She’s outstanding. I mean, everybody was outstanding, but she’s an American girl who learned the game and is very good in the net. She’s your typical soccer player who is not afraid to dive.”

Mohan says she was thinking about retiring, but she is so excited by the possibility of a hat trick that she’s going to hang around. And next year’s North American games will be fought here in Philadelphia, which would make a three-peat especially sweet.

And who knows, Mohan says. The Maireads might even go on to beat another record–that of Philadelphia’s celebrated Emerald Eagles, who won four senior titles in a row. “I played for the Emerald Eagles back then in the ’90s, and that record has never been broken,” she says. “My goal is to beat my own record. We’ll see what happens. One year at a time.”

September 9, 2011 by Jeff Meade

Sports

GAA Ladies Bring It On Home

Woo-hoo! The Notre Dames cheer their trophy. Photo by Eileen McElroy.

The Mairead Farrells (Máiréad Ní Fhearghail) Ladies Football Club of Philadelphia became the 2010 North American Senior Football Champions over Labor Day weekend at the national GAA games at Chicago’s Gaelic Park. The footballers had already won the Philadelphia senior football title a few weeks before.

The team they beat in the city match-up, the Notre Dames, also brought home a trophy from Chicago. This team is now the 2010 North American Intermediate Football Champions. They’ll both be defending their titles next year in San Francisco.

Notre Dames player Eileen McElroy is also a talented photographer and she shared some photos from the ladies’ competition and the men’s matches featuring Philly GAA teams the Kevin Barrys and the Young Irelanders. The men didn’t bring home trophies, but they fought like Celtic tigers.

Check out Eileen’s photos:

Thanks to Peadar McDiarmada for reporting the results from Chicago.

September 14, 2010 by Denise Foley

Sports

Gaelic Sport Action on Dougherty Field

Mairead Farrell Team Captain Ciara Moore gets a kiss on the cheek from Ann Marie Cawley, sister of the late Sean P. Cawley, after whom the divisional championship cup is named.

The Mairead Farrell Junior Ladies Football Club again took the division championship and the Sean P. Cawley Cup on Sunday afternoon at Cardinal Dougherty High School. But it wasn’t easy. Their opponents, the Notre Dames, played their hearts out. As Maired Farrell Team Captain Ciara Moore told her teammates after the game, “It could have gone either way.”

Both teams will be traveling to Chicago over the Labor Day weekend for the national championships, as will the Allentown Hibernians hurling team which clinched its second divisional championship in a match against the Philadelphia Shamrocks.

We have photos from both championship games and from the men’s football match-up between the Young Irelanders and the St. Patrick clubs in which St. Patrick emerged the winner.

View the Allentown Hibernians-Philadelphia Shamrocks game photos (with thanks to Eileen McElroy).
View the St. Patrick-Young Irelander game shots.

August 17, 2010 by Denise Foley

People

Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams Meets with Local GAA Footballers

Gerry Adams, center, with the Mairead Farrell Ladies Junior Football Club in Philadelphia.

It seemed like the perfect name, says Angela Mohan. When she and Siobhan Trainor were casting about for a name for their new ladies Gaelic football club, they wanted to honor a strong Irish woman. They picked Mairead Farrell, the Belfast-born IRA fighter who spent 10 years in prison and was killed by British soldiers on Gibraltar in 1988.

The insignia associated with Farrell was a phoenix rising from the ashes. It seemed appropriate. Mohan and Trainor have both been involved with other football teams in the Philadelphia area that have folded and later been reborn as interest and the number of seasoned Irish players waxed and waned.

Their new team still relies on the Irish—often with summer visitors that Mohan recruits—but is now bucked up by Americans, many of them superb athletes on the basketball courts, but who have never played the game that started in Ireland the early 14th century.

Nevertheless, the women took home the Sean P. Cawley Cup as Philadelphia’s regional champions after a tough game against the Notre Dames last summer on the fields of Cardinal Dougherty High School.

But it was the name of their team that caught the attention of Gerry Adams, a member of Northern Ireland’s parliament and longtime head of Sinn Fein, the political party closely affiliated with the IRA.

A few months ago, he sent them a letter,commending them for commemorating the life of Mairead Farrell who, he said, “was a very special young woman whose love for her country encompassed its history and culture, including Gaelic games.”

The letter concluded, “I wish you well and hope to see you in Philadelphia in the future.” A typical sign-off. . .except that Adams meant it.

Last Friday, October 16, before Adams attended the annual banquet of the Irish Society in Philadelphia at the Penns Landing Hyatt, he spent half an hour chatting, laughing and posing for pictures with members of the team who came suited up and with a gift—a Mairead Farrell jersey. “I hope it’s extra large,” he joked.

With him was Rita O’Hare, the Sinn Fein representative to the United States, with whom Farrell had stayed in Dublin after her release from prison. “I’m glad Mairead’s name is being used and still being heard,” said O’Hare. Adams, she said was very enthusiastic about meeting the team that bears her name. “Plus he’s mad about GAA,” she laughed.

October 23, 2009 by Denise Foley

Sports

You Go, Girls!

The Mairead Farrells posing with their hard-won cup.

When two great teams meet on the field, the winners are always the folks on the sidelines who are treated to a nail-biting display of athleticism and strategy that they know can always go either way.

But when the Maired Farrells ladies junior footballers came back from half-time during Sunday’s championship round with the Notre Dames, there was no doubt about it—these women had jets they hadn’t turned on yet.

This relatively new team barreled to victory—and they did it despite heat, humidity, rain, and mud. Or, maybe, because of it.

We were there for this exciting game that won the Mairead Farrells the Sean P. Cawley Cup as Philadelphia’s regional championships and earned them a spot on the schedule at the GAA Nationals in Boston over the Labor Day weekend.

August 14, 2009 by Denise Foley