Kilcoole LGFA

There has always been strong interest in ladies football in Kilcoole but like all clubs it hasn’t been plain sailing.

Our first adult ladies team lined out in the late 1990s and their efforts eventually paid off in the Junior Championship of 2006 with a fine win against our neighbours in Greystones. Training and matches continued for a few more years, but the team eventually disbanded in 2011 due to players moving on and no new adult players coming up.

Meanwhile, on the youth side, girls and boys played side by side until U12 level, and then with nowhere to go, girls couldn’t play any further. In 2018, the club realised that we needed a dedicated ladies section to engage with girls to actively promote the playing of football and the club renewed and strengthened its ties with the LGFA. With a proactive ladies committee and coaching team supporting and nurturing the players from U8s through to Minors, we have set ourselves the task of fielding the first adult team in nearly 10 years. And based on passion, interest and numbers, this will happen in the very near future. Exciting times ahead!

We’ve been very lucky to have huge uptake in girls playing football since, especially after running successful programmes like the Gaelic4Girls programme in 2018 and Gaelic4Teens in 2020, and we are looking forward to running this programme again this year. We’ve recently been chosen to participate in the LGFA’s/Lidl Ireland’s ‘One Good Club’ Initiative with Jigsaw Youth Mental Health, just one of 25 clubs participating nationwide, and this project is aimed at raising awareness around the importance of mental health amongst teenagers.

You can see the huge effort being put into ladies football in Kilcoole and the drive to encourage and support more girls and women in playing is very evident!