The St. Eunan’s U14 Féile team landed their club’s first All-Ireland title in Pairc Uí Rinn when they defeated Ahan Gaels (Cork) by 0-11 to 0-02 in the final.
After making it to the final last year, only to be denied by the width of a crossbar, the lads made no mistake as they played an intelligent brand of football throughout to take the title back to Donegal for the first time.
The Donegal side were leading 0-08 to 0-01 at the break, the lads played with a maturity beyond their years and kept the Cork attack at bay throughout, conceding only 2 pointed frees in the whole game.
Proceedings began on Thursday against Blarney with the Letterkenny lads winning 3-04 to 0-03.
A much busier day was in store on Friday as they had three group games to play. First up was St.Martins at 10am and it ended with a 1-08 to 0-05 win.
With minimal time to reflect on their victory, the next throw-in was 11am against the host team Whitechurch.
It ended 1-05 to 0-04 in favour of the Black & Amber. The last group game was against Thomas Russells at 12:30 and although they had previously been beaten, the table showed a superior points difference for the Russells men meaning that St.Eunans would need at least a draw to go through (only 1 qualifier per group).
After quite a nervous display, St.Eunans won the game by the narrowest of margins on a scoreline of 1-03 to 1-02.
This set the lads up with a fourth game of the day as they qualified to meet Macroom in the Div3 (there are six divisions in total) semi-final at 5pm. Showing no signs of nerves, St.Eunans turned in a masterful performance as they recorded a 3-15 to 1-03 win against the bewildered Cork outfit.
Having found their form in the semi-final, the lads maintained this level of performance the following day to take the title back to Letterkenny.
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