Congratulations to Gallen CS

[Lone Shark]

Great win for the Ferbane school today, taking the Leinster Vocational schools title with plenty to spare against Coláiste Bhríde of Carnew in Portlaoise. Finished Gallen 4-12 Carnew 1-5, and being honest, that scoreline didn't flatter Gallen one bit. Their semi final win over Granard was all about grit and resolve, this was pure style and flair, great stuff to watch with four great goals. Eoghan Lowry's first strike was as good a team goal and as immaculate a finish as you could hope to see.

Provisionally (I think) the school plays the Ulster winners in the semi final on the 26th, but that's subject to confirmation. Can't wait for it myself, but one way or another it bodes well for Offaly minors later in the year.

The team and scorers were:

GALLEN CS: Darren Digan; Darren Kelly, Conor Lowry, James Nally; Stephen Wren, Darragh Corbett, Shane Costello (1-0); Leon Fox (2-0), Ciarán Cahill; Joe Maher (0-2, frees), Aaron McDonagh (0-2), Blaine Rigney (0-1); Ryan Delaney, Brian Grehan (0-2), Eoghan Lowry (1-5, 0-4 frees)

Subs.: Darragh Keenaghan for Ryan Delaney, PJ Kidney for Stephen Wren, John Dooley for Blaine Rigney

COLÁISTE BHRIDE, CARNEW: William Lillis; Stephen Murphy (0-1), Michael Lyons, Cillian O’Toole; Niall Dempsey, Martin O’Brien, David Conway; Brendan McCrea (1-2, 1-0 pen), Aodh Doyle (0-2, frees); Dean O’Toole, Conor Levingstone, Michael Rock; Cormac Byrne, John Burke, Cormac Doyle.

Subs.: Sean Roche for Cormac Byrne, James Keogh for Cillian O’Toole, Joseph Hughes for Michael Rock.

[old yellar]

Great win. That's the double vocational schools tiles this year for Offaly. Belated well done to Banagher college on retaining their title 10 days or so ago. Got a right rattle in the semi final, but were more than 3 points a better team than Johnstown in final.

[joe123]

Congratulations, looks a stong team, big victory, mightn't be too far off an Ireland. Best of luck in the All Ireland series.

[TheManFromFerbane]

Congratulations to the lads, great result and sets them up well for the All Ireland series.

[jimbob17]

great win for ferbane, well done to all concerned. a lot of good work being done in schools football in the last few years and has contributed enormously to the success of co minor teams. in the past 2/3 years, Gallen Ferbane, Marys edenderry, Tullamore college and Col Iosagain portarlington have won leinster senior honours. also col choilm tullamore and Moate CC have acquited themselves very well at a high level of competition in schools football. This has massive implications for these boys as playing in Leinster finals and all ireland semi finals and finals will give players a massive confidence boost and it is seen in the recent Co Minor success.

this is a very good ferbane team with most available again next year as far as i know. good to see the football getting priority again after the rugby took over a lot of their effort for a while. this doesnt happen by chance however and ferbane GAA must take some credit having invested an amount of finance on these lads at club level. Corbett Cahill, Grehan, Mcdonagh and Lowry are probably the pick of them but they have a lot of good back up too. Well done to all!!!

[offaly lad 6]

Great result! they have a strong team, hopefully they can do well in all-ireland serious! Ulster opponents will be tough

[Lone Shark]

Confirmed today that it will be Holy Trinity of Cookstown in opposition in the semi final after they took the Ulster title on a 1-14 to 0-13 scoreline over Rosses CC of Dungloe. As far as I'm aware this means the semi final will be next Saturday in Cavan at 2pm, but that's not confirmed yet so check back in before travelling on that basis!

This will be a huge ask for Gallen - it's been seven years since an Ulster team failed to win their All Ireland semi final in this competition, while based on the results, it actually looks as if the only Leinster school to ever beat an Ulster team in this grade was Athlone CC in 1993 - Edenderry (1985) and Clara (2001) both won this All Ireland in the past but neither seemed to have played Ulster teams on the way, unless I'm mistaken? As with most schools that Gallen come across, they'll have over double the amount of pupils to pick from, but then that's par for the course by now.

All that said, this Gallen panel is a great group of young footballers who have grown up winning matches and they'll have no fear going into the game, and nor should they. They've no shortage of exceptional talent too and while Cookstown's semi final win over Ballygawley (0-18 to 0-5) looked very impressive, there's no doubt they will look at the scoreline from the Leinster final and be mildly worried about Gallen's ability as well.

I can't wait for it myself, should be a cracker of a match, and best of luck to the Gallen lads!

[gunnerman]

Ballyconnell in County Cavan is the venue at 2pm this Saturday. Winners play Clonakilty the following Saturday in the Final in Croke Park. Ballyconnell is past Cavan Town and past Belturbet.

[Lone Shark]

That's one serious pain in the head of a venue. Still, can't wait for it....

Powers gone up 1/4 Holy Trinity, 15/2 Draw and 10/3 Gallen. There's one for all the loyalty punters out there among ye!

[True Red]

hardly worth a punt?

[Lone Shark]

Maybe. I don't like recommending anything where I haven't seen one of the teams though. Holy Trinity could be MacRory Cup winning standard and I wouldn't know to be honest.

It's a good Gallen team, albeit it's essentially a club side - and bearing in mind that Cookstown have the pick of four or five strong footballing clubs, it's a big ask. Our lads won't go down easily though.

[Slugger]

Magnificent achievement for the lads today. Thoroughly deserved their win. Only gripe was the venue. Was that really the best that could be found for an All-Ireland semi-final?

[darknight]

have to agree with slugger.the grass was very long and it looked fierce heavy to run on

[fiesta flyer]

great win for gallen lads today..have great chance to go all the way great balanced team

[Lone Shark]

I had been meaning to get back to this all week, but better late than never.....

Honestly, and I say this without a hint of bias, unless you were in Ballyconnell you simply couldn't appreciate the quality of the football on offer in this game against Holy Trinity. As was pointed out above, the venue left a lot to be desired interms of the length of the grass and the location, however the standard of football was excellent from both sides.

Joe McQuillan took charge of the game and being honest, I did feel at the time that he was a little bit quick to award frees to Holy Trinity lads who were very fast but sometimes lacked a little bit of creativity in creating scores. 0-11 out of the 1-14 from Holy Trinity came from frees and with the exception of corner forward Kieran McGeary, they didn't look that incisive. That said they were a strong, fit group of young players and the depth they had was best illustrated by the fact that they had ten clubs represented on the field, four of them senior clubs to the best of my knowledge. (Kildress, Cookstown, Ardboe, Clonoe). They had six members of the Tyrone minor panel on duty and looked like a very capable outfit.

That Gallen were good enough to overcome them was down to some very well executed but extremely simple football. The backline tackled very well and secured a good few turnovers, albeit conceding a few frees along the way, and Conor Lowry was immense at the edge of the square. The midfield got through a fierce amount of work with Ciarán Cahill chipping in with two good points, Aaron McDonagh had a great first half with Joe Maher leading the way in the second, and up front was a great unit with Brian Grehan fielding high and low balls equally capably and laying the ball off extremely well. Eoghan Lowry took his scores very well and was clever in possession and late sub Darragh Keenaghan held his own during the match and then stepped up in a big way to earn our last point and score our last goal. At the other end, Darren Digan had one crucial save to make during the game and he got down well to do so.

In a game with one sub, one blood sub and no significant injury break, Joe McQuillan managed to find five minutes of injury time to give us all heart failure, but alls well that ends well.

It doesn't get any easier this Saturday against Clonakilty - the Cork lads won their semi final at a canter and are the reigning All Ireland champions, picking from a huge chunk of good Cork football country. Powers are making Gallen outsiders again - 1/3 Clonakilty and 11/4 Gallen - but having said that, our lads have a great attitude and if they can repeat the form of last Saturday, they're in with a great chance.

12:00 in Croke Park on Saturday, live on TG4 for those of you who can't make it.