They were blasting Brewing Up a Storm over the stadium speakers on Saturday evening as the players of Athlone Town gathered on the pitch to collect the SSE Airtricity Premier Division trophy. An appropriate tune it was too because that’s pretty much what this team has succeeded in doing all season.
Their 2-0 win over Bohemians, courtesy of first-half goals from Madie Gibson and Kellie Brennan, wrapped up the title with one game still to play. Shelbourne are just three points behind but cannot overtake Athlone on the final day because of the latter’s superior head-to-head record. The sides drew back in March, but the key result came in August at Tolka Park when Athlone came from behind to beat Shels with a late Kerryanne Brown penalty.
“It’s an amazing feeling, I’m so proud of them,” said manager Ciarán Kilduff on TG4 on Saturday. “We’ve been working hard all season and the girls deserve this. This is a couple of years in the making, a lot of these girls have been here since the beginning. The hardest thing was getting them to believe they could do it, but they’ve done it and they deserve it.”
Asked where this ranked in his footballing career, which saw the Kildare man win top-flight titles with Shamrock Rovers and Dundalk during his playing days, Kilduff didn’t hesitate.
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“Ah, this is it. I couldn’t have envisaged it going this way, this has to be one of the sweetest moments I’ve ever experienced. We did our talking on the pitch, we didn’t go holding press conferences telling people how good we were and what we were going to do. We picked up 43 of the last 48 points and that’s why we’re champions. I couldn’t be prouder of them.”
It’s been a remarkable 16 months for Kilduff who took over from Tommy Hewitt when he left the club last year. In November Athlone won their first FAI Cup when they beat Shels on penalties at Tallaght Stadium, and now he has led them to the league title. And there will be a double up for grabs when they meet Shels in the FAI Cup final for the third year running in a fortnight’s time.
And this is a club that didn’t even compete in the senior National League until 2020, their progress since then having been of the see-saw kind. They finished seventh in their first two campaigns, then gave a glimpse of their potential when they were runners-up to Shels in 2022. But then they dipped dramatically last season, ending in fifth place, 17 points behind champions Peamount.
Going into this season they had to contend with the loss of leading scorer Dana Scheriff and come summer the departure of Northern Ireland international Casey Howe to Nottingham Forest. And there was the cruellest of blows in that win over Shels in August when key midfielder Chloe Singleton picked up a season-ending injury.
But Athlone dealt with everything thrown at them, Cameroon striker Brenda Ebika Tabe, who arrived in July, and American Madie Gibson scoring 11 goals between them in the last seven games to help push the side over the line. But the team has been littered with stars, not least captain Laurie Ryan, who made her 100th appearance for the club on Saturday.
What might cap the season off would be an Athlone call-up or two to the Republic of Ireland squad that Eileen Gleeson will name on Thursday week for the Euro 2025 playoff games home and away to Georgia.
Courtney Brosnan will arrive into that camp with a spring in her step after a week that saw her save three penalties in the shoot-out that followed Everton’s draw with Newcastle United in the League Cup and, on, Sunday, she kept a clean sheet at the Emirates where Everton took their first away point from Arsenal since 2009.
Less encouraging is that Kyra Carusa, Ruesha Littlejohn, Megan Campbell and Chloe Mustaki are all still out of action with injuries, as are Jamie Finn and Jess Ziu, although Finn is much further down the road to recovery from her anterior cruciate ligament injury than Ziu.
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