Scoil Mhuire Buncrana gears up for historic All-Ireland football final

Scoil Mhuire Buncrana school manager Kevin Campbell believes the next few days are all about focusing his players for their first All-Ireland football final in Markievicz Park this Saturday. 

In a jittery semi-final two weeks ago, the Buncrana side came from behind to overcome St Cuan’s of Galway on a scoreline of 2-10 to 2-7. 

But now, the management team of Campbell and Donegal star Ciarán Thompson has to settle their side for the biggest GAA event in their school’s history. However, the former Donegal hurler noted that they will have one notable absentee due to Finn Harps commitments. 

“We’re getting on with the week as best as we can,” said Campbell. “Thankfully we have a full bit of health. Unfortunately, we probably won’t have Darragh Coyle because he’s after breaking into the Finn Harps first team, so, I can’t see the club releasing him for a school’s match after playing on the Friday night for them, it’ll be great to have him, but we’re just going to have to get on with it.” 

Reflecting on the semi-final, Campbell acknowledges that his team can’t make the same mistakes again as they did against Ballinasloe by conceding early goals.  

“We didn’t really know an awful lot about the opposition in the semi-final,” said the schoolteacher. “We let in two goals early in the first half, which was unfortunate because we told the boys to keep it really tight for the first 10 minutes and figure out where we could get at them. 

“But that’s football, you plan to keep it, and then within five minutes we had an unlucky goal that crawled over the line and a few minutes later we conceded a penalty, but in fairness to the lads, they came back strong and never dropped their heads. 

“Like we probably did start pushing panic buttons early on. Ballinasloe brought a big crowd with them that were very hostile, they were banging on the stands and shouting the players’ names, so the lads had to deal with that, but once we settled ourselves and started making opportunities we started to relax into the game and take control.” 

In terms of preparation for the weekend, Campbell believes his team just needs to play the way they have been playing all year and they are within a great chance of winning a first senior All-Ireland football title. 

“We’ll not change our system, or we’ll not change how we prepare,” Campbell stated. “We’ll just ask the boys to do what they’ve been doing all year. If the performance takes us over the line, it takes us over the line, if it doesn’t it doesn’t.  

“It’s one of these things that we just tell the boys it’s another match, but we know it’s not really another match. For an All-Ireland final we have to control the emotions of players and get talking to them individually to focus on the first five minutes. 

“We just want the lads to do the simple things right and play their way into the game and just try not to play the occasion as much as we did in the semi-final, and if we do that, I think we’ll be okay. 

“Our school has never been this far in GAA, we’ve won All-Irelands in soccer but not in this sport, so the lads have an opportunity to create history and I really hope they do it.”