A Chara,

As the league seasons conclude for many of our teams, the whisper of championship begins to get louder and louder. In only a short few weeks all of our adult teams will put their hard work over the last few months on the line as they aim to bring ultimate glory home to Aghada. Some of our underage teams have already been in championship action and a big congratulations to our U14 footballers who won the shield championship on Sunday evening in Dungourney against Bride Rovers. A great start to the summer for the club!  

As mentioned above, nearly all of our adult teams have reached the conclusion of their league campaigns. Our Intermediate A hurlers have 5 points on the board after good wins against Ballygiblin and Barryroe along with a draw against Na Piarsaigh. These results look to have preserved our status in division 6 of the RedFM league but we must wait for a few games to be completed in the rest of the group to be sure of safety. Our 5 points on the board doesn’t really show how competitive we were in these games. Losing out narrowly to Sars, Erins Own, Glen Rovers & Kilbrittain. On another day, some of these losses would have turned to wins and we would have been up towards the top of the table! The highlight of the league campaign for our hurlers was a great away victory against Ballygiblin. 

Our Premier Intermediate Footballers ended up with 7 points on the board in the McCarthy Insurance Group Division 3 league. This league was extremely competitive and in our final game last Sunday our lads knew nothing less than a win would ensure we survived in this division. Thankfully, the team put in a fantastic performance in Glantane and came away with a brilliant victory. Again, similar to our hurlers, our lads were incredibly unlucky in a few of the games they didn’t get maximum points in. Draws against Newmarket, Macroom and Nemo Rangers could very well have been wins along with a one point defeat to Bishopstown. Our lads will still be delighted to have maintained their status in this league for 2025 as it is an incredibly competitive division. Theres no doubt the highlight of this campaign was the final day one point away victory against a fancied Kilshannig outfit. 

Our Junior B Hurlers ended up finishing mid table on 8 points (only 2 points off a league final) after good wins against Russell Rovers, Carrigtwohill, Fr O’Neills and Dungourney. In this campaign numbers were tight so it was a great achievement to regain status in this league again for 2025. The highlight of this campaign was a great one point victory over Carrigtwohill down in Rostellan after a ding dong battle. Along with this, it was great to see a number of minors get the opportunity to play adult hurling for the first time and they acquitted themselves very well. 

Our Junior C Footballers struggled in their league this year. Again struggling for numbers some days our lads put in good performances but unfortunately came out on the wrong side of the result on most occasions. The highlight of this campaign was a great comeback against Midleton in April where our lads were 9 points down at half time and also found themselves reduced to 14 players. However, the team dug in and ended up rescuing a draw and in fact were unlucky not to snatch victory at the very end. It is very important to point out that Brian Walsh does a fantastic job at organising all of our adult GAA matches and should be commended for doing so. It is no easy task to make sure these things run smoothly. Well done Brian!

Our Junior A Camogie team have trained hard under the stewardship of Donal Godfrey all year and have been unlucky in their opening league matches. However, with a large number of girls set to return from inter county squads, Donie and his charges will be aiming to have a right crack off the Junior A County. The team play their final league match against Milford on Saturday evening in Castle Road at 5pm. Please support the girls if you can in their final league fixture for 2024!

Our Senior Ladies Footballers maintained their place in division 1 of the LGFA league this year after picking up 6 points over the spring. The highlight for the team was a win at home against St. Vals and a comprehensive victory away against Bride Rovers. The girls will be delighted to have maintained their division 1 status for 2025. For the first time this year, our ladies footballers also fielded 2 junior teams. This was fantastic for the girls involved as they all got plenty of game time and picked up a nice few wins along the way too!

Now that we have our league campaigns wrapped up, we move to what’s ahead in the business end of the year… the championship! 

In Premier Intermediate Football we face Aghabullogue, Ilen Rovers and Uibh Laoire. 

In Intermediate A Hurling we face Midleton, Sarsfields and Ballygiblin. 

In Junior A Football we face Castlemartyr, Carrignavar and Erins Own

In Junior B Hurling we face Watergrasshill, Killeagh and Sarsfields.

In Junior C Football we face Carrigtwohill, Glenville and Bride Rovers. 

In Senior Ladies Football we face Eire Og, Bride Rovers, Clonakilty and Kinsale. 

The Junior A Camogie championship fixtures will be announced soon. 

So, there is a lot of big games coming up this summer. Keep an eye on the website and social media for the latest updates on these games. Dates and venues will be sent out to members in a separate communication so keep and eye out for that!

 

Our club coaching committee led by Vice Chairperson Eoin O’Neill has been very busy over the last few months. The club has hosted a foundation coaching course with a large number of members participating in below in Rostellan. This was a great opportunity for newer coaches to upskill ahead of the new season. Keith Ricken gave an inspirational workshop in our clubhouse earlier in the year which focused on how to coach children and get the best out of them. New Cork GDC Ciarán O’Brien has been a huge help to our coaching committee this year and has contributed greatly to the club. He ran our foundation course which is mentioned above along with running a coaching hurling workshop last week. This workshop combined theory with practice as Ciarán delivered a very insightful presentation before backing it up with some very interesting game based drills on the playing pitch. Cathal McAllister also gave some very useful insights from a referees point of view which our coaches found very useful. Ciarán will also run another coaching workshop in the near future. A special thanks to him for all his contributions to Aghada so far this year. 

Our schools coaching continues to go from strength to strength led by Pat O’Connell and Paula Dunne. Again this year, they have been assisted by 16 TY students who have done a great job in encouraging our youngest members in the three parish primary schools to join our club. Pat, Paula and the TY students worked with junior infants, senior infants and 1st class students to coach them the basic skills of hurling, camogie, football and ladies football over 4 six week programs. In May, the club then hosted two monster blitzes in Rostellan with over 300 kids taking part on both days. Thanks to Scartleigh National School, Aghada National School and Whitegate National School for allowing us into the schools to coach all the young boys and girls. Special mention to principals Denise Collins, Helena O’Neill and Lar Collins for being so welcoming to our schools coaching crew every week. We can’t wait to return in September! 

Well done to all involved in coaching our Ukrainian friends in Aghada over the last 8 weeks. It was great for the club to be involved in a great joint initiative with the primary schools and Trabolgan. The program aimed to give our Ukrainian friends a taster of Gaelic games. Hopefully we will see them back in Rostellan later in the summer wearing the green and white of Aghada. Thanks to the local garda bus for transporting the children to our grounds for the final weeks of the initiative. A big thanks to Trabolgan and the primary schools for being so active and helpful in this joint initiative. Finally, thanks to Pat, Paula and our TY students for helping out here also!

Our Healthy Club Committee have been very busy over the last number of months, organising a number of talks throughout the year. We have held a number of Mental Health talks with Cork Camogie star Saoirse McCarthy also visiting to talk to our U14 players on the pressures they face in life. This year we again held the Darkness into Light walk in Rostellan which was a great success with over 600 euro being raised for Pieta! The healthy club committee also ran a jiving course for three weeks in Rostellan which a number of members really enjoyed and had great fun at! Thanks to Healthy Club lead Gillian Berry, Mary O’Shea, Saundra Walsh and Paula Dunne for all the hard work they put in to this part of the club. A few weeks ago we also hosted a heart screening event which booked out incredibly fast. Well done to Ella Lewis for organising such an important event. The good news is that we are hosting another one of these events on the 13th of July. Thanks to Yvonne O’Neill for organising this. Book at the following link: https://bookings.ameds.ie/booking/from-code?code=Aghada 

 

Our GAA 4 All has returned every Saturday morning and all participants are having a great time yet again below in Rostellan. This has been a fantastic initiative in the club and is what the GAA is all about. Thanks to all the mentors who give up their time every Saturday morning. 

Our club now has a Dads and Lads team which started only a few months ago. There has been great numbers training and the lads are having a bit of craic along the way. Apparently there’s more talking then running! If you would like to join in, contact Colin Rooney who will give you more details.

Well done to Padraig Sisk on winning our latest club lotto jackpot of ELEVEN THOUSAND EURO. A lovely win that will definitely spruce up the summer for Padraig! You could do the same if you were to win tonight’s jackpot. Its simple to play, just buy a ticket at any of the usual outlets or online at: https://bit.ly/3bWAiqD 

Our Senior Ladies Footballers headed to Killarney for the June bank holiday for the Killarney 7s tournament in Spa GAA.  Our girls had a great opening day, winning all 3 matches. A unique point to note was Aghada defeated Killarney Legion, Birmingham and Chicago on the day. So a great days work ended with wins against a team from Ireland, England and America! The ladies then headed into the weekend as the number 1 ranked team out of 24 and were hoping to bring the title home to Aghada. Our girls got over the first hurdle on the Sunday against Limerick opposition and were drawn to face Castlehaven in the quarter final. This was always going to be a close contest and it sure was a game for the ages. Sally McAllister looked to have sealed the win for Aghada when she saved a penalty in the final minute of the game. However, a goal was rather controversially given. Controversially is putting it mildly! When the final whistle sounded the scores were deadlocked. In the Killarney 7s, the game then goes straight to penalties (with a twist). Each team nominates 3 penalty takers and each taker starts with the ball on the half way line and has 10 seconds to score a goal. Not an easy task. Unfortunately, we weren’t successful in these and our dreams of bringing the title home ended. However, it must be said that our girls represented our club brilliantly over the course of the weekend both on and off the pitch. Well done to all involved and all who organised the trip. Special mention to Eimear Cronin who organised Aghada’s participation in the event and Bridget Wall for organising the hotel for all the players and management. Spa GAA were great hosts and our girls can’t wait for 2025! Maybe we might enter a male team as well in 2025? 

Our Junior C Footballers were successful in the Glenville 7s tournament last weekend. Our lads had victories against Glenville, the Gardaí and Bishopstown in the final with Mattie Leahy striking a goal in the last few moments of the game to snatch victory for the men in green. Well done lads!

 

We are incredibly lucky in Aghada to have mentors and players who are extremely talented at what they do and we are delighted a number of them are involved with Cork teams. 

First up is Fergal Condon. There is the small matter of the All-Ireland Hurling Semi Final in two weeks’ time in Croke Park against All Ireland Champions Limerick. Fergal is in his second year as selector with the Cork seniors and we wish him and all the team well as they aim to stop the drive for five and get Cork one step closer to bringing Liam McCarthy home to Leeside. 

 

Hard luck to Brian Walsh and the Cork Footballers who lost out narrowly to Louth last weekend in the All-Ireland Preliminary Quarter Final. Brian is a key backroom analyst for the Rebels and hopefully he will be back with the Rebels again in 2025.

Best wishes to Aoife Healy, Abigail Ring, Sarah Leahy, Rachel Leahy, Hannah Looney and Kaitlin Smith who are looking forward to the All-Ireland Quarter Final of the Ladies Football Championship next Saturday (6th July) in SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh at 1:15pm. The Rebels went 2 from 2 in the group with a comprehensive win away to Laois and a narrow win at home to a good Galway side. They will be hoping to reach the semi-final of the All-Ireland in the Páirc next week so please get out to support the team if you can. Best of luck to all the girls and Tomás Sayers who is selector with the team. 

Next, onto Camogie. The reigning All Ireland Champions are flying in the group stages of the All-Ireland so far with 4 wins from 4. Their final game of the group is against Galway in Supervalu Páirc Uí Chaoimh this Saturday (29th June) at 4pm Vs Galway. The rebels will be hoping to win this game to top the group and secure passage to the Semi Final. Best of luck to Aoife Healy, Amy O’Connor and Hannah Looney who will be lining out on Saturday. Please support if you can. 

A huge congratulations to Jude Devoy, Isaac Oosthuizen and Colm O’Donoghue who won the Celtic Challenge Shield Competition with East Cork. The lads defeated Dublin in the final and secured 2 in a row in this competition for East Cork. A special mention to Jude Devoy who was also on the Cork Minor Hurling team this year. A fantastic achievement for Jude and all his family and something that we are very proud of here in Aghada. Hopefully there will be big days in red ahead for Jude and more of his Aghada team mates in the years to come!

On a different note, tickets for inter county matches have been hot property over the last few months. Like everyone else in the county, most tickets for the Munster championship went through the clubs. This is great news if you aren’t the one trying to sort everyone out! Well done and thanks to our club secretary John Murphy who has put in a lot of time to try to help as many people as he can out here. There is a lot of unseen work and time goes in here. From buying all the tickets himself, to printing tickets off and then to distributing them! Hours and hours would slip by without anyone noticing so thanks John for this! 

Well done to all our members who have recently completed their Junior and Leaving certificate exams. What will be, will be at this stage and remember there are different avenues into everything so don’t worry about the results. The work is done now so relax, and enjoy the summer!

The club extends its gratitude to Bill Tate, Tommy Deady, and James Guard for their invaluable assistance in servicing the club’s tractor. The tractor, which had been in dry dock at Bucktown’s farm for the past few months, received some much-needed TLC. The maintenance work included installing new brakes, mud guards, steps etc., and performing a full service. Their dedication and willingness to contribute their time is greatly appreciated by all in the  club. The 3 pitches won’t know what hit it when the tractor gets back on them!

After discussions at last years AGM, a crest committee was formed and has met on a number of occasions now to discuss some improvements to our current Aghada crest to reflect that we are now one club. We have had great discussions and look forward to sharing new potential crest options with the club membership in the near future. Watch this space! 

The club would like to send our condolences to the family of the legendary GAA commentator Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh who died this week. I think everyone remembers his famous off the cuff quotes that filled every sitting room in Ireland for over 60 years. Of course, his final GAA game he commented on for RTE was the 2010 All Ireland Final between Cork and Down where our own Conor Counihan led the Rebels to victory!

The club would also like to express its sympathies to all club members who have lost loved ones over the last number of months. 

 

That’s it for today’s newsletter. Keep an eye on social media for the build up to the club championships over the next few months. Safe travels to anyone going on holidays abroad over the summer. Have a great and safe holiday. 

Slán, 

        

Ár nDícheall Go Deo     

  

Website for most up to date fixtures news and results -http://www.aghadagaa.com/