ON Sunday September 7th, The St Brendan’s Football 1st XV, sponsored by Dymanic Safety Solutions, were 60 minutes away from knowing their fate for the rest of the year. Victory over Crumlin today means that the season will be extended to two more weeks and a spot in the Go Ahead Junior 1 Club Football Championship Quarter Finals. Lose, and that’s that for 2025. 

Todays fixture is a repeat of an epic encounter exactly one year to the day. Then a late Diarmuid Cooney point ensured St Brendan’s got into the Quarter Finals on Scoring difference over Crumlin.  

Unfortunately, this writer was unavoidably absent in Longmeadows this morning, so here is some additional reporting from Shane Feeney, Kevin Berry and Conall Morgan. 

The Dark Force played with the wind for the whole 60 minutes! How was that possible? Well, There was a strong wind and, rather oddly the wind changed at half time, where the Half time score was St Brendan’s 0-14 Crumlin 0-6, hence it is why we had it for both Half’s! 

St Brendans made the most of the wind advantage for the whole 60 minutes and scored SEVEN two pointers during the 60 minutes. Cathal ‘Patrick Mahomes’ O’Donnell scored three two pointers, while Diarmuid ‘Dempsey’ Cooney scored 4 two pointers as well as 5 singles giving him a personal tally of 0-13 and was very much on the money, according to Kevin Berry .  

The Other Point scorers, according to Feeney were The Valley Rover Tadhg O’Brien with 3 Singles and The Shoeman Brendan Brogan the other point, as always assisted by his fellow Sligoman, Stephen ‘Manama Pat’ Durkan. 

Also, Scatman John Dorrian marked their best player out of the game and held him to maybe 2 points from play.  

There was great work on their kick outs… Never let a man free and pressured high. Eoghan ‘The Bridge’ Clogher had a few great saves and kick outs were great too.  

So a solid team performance for full 60 minutes and a Quarter Final in two weeks time, to look forward to and its an away fixture to Beann Eidair.  

Final Score from Longmeadows, St Brendan’s 0-23 Crumlin 2-13. 

Later in the afternoon, The St Brendan’s Football 2nd XV, in partnership with Stoneybatter Pride of place, played their 2nd fixture in the Junior 5 All County Championship in Donaghmede against Trinity Gaels, however, the home side ran out 3-10 to 0-9 winners. The Darkest Force can still reach the Quarter Finals with victory over St Sylvesters in two weeks time.