Athlone Town vs Galway United: FAI Women’s Cup Semi-Final Clash
Athlone’s new dynasty meets Galway’s restless ambition in a semi-final that feels bigger than its billing.
In only their seventh season as a league club, Athlone Town are chasing a fifth consecutive FAI Women’s Cup final and a third title in four years. That kind of dominance used to belong to names from another era. Now it’s the midlanders muscling in alongside the old giants of the roll of honour.
Across from them stand Galway United, a side that has promised plenty, pushed on multiple fronts, and yet still waits for a first major trophy. One game from a Cup final they’ve never reached, they come into this tie with a quiet conviction that this season can break the pattern.
A competition with ghosts and giants
The FAI Women’s Cup is officially in its 52nd year. The records begin in 1975, with Limerick beating Civil Service 2-1 at Markets Field. That was 36 years before the first official women’s national league kicked off, a reminder of how long this Cup has carried the story of the women’s game in Ireland.
The early winners feel almost mythical now. Benfica – not Lisbon, but Waterford – lifted the trophy three times, the last of them in 1993 when a 15-year-old Ciara Grant stole the show in Kilcohan Park, then the beating heart of football in the city before the RSC took over.
Before that, the Suffragettes were the standard-bearers, a club whose very name nodded to the Pankhursts. They claimed three Cups in five seasons in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Dublin Castle, too, had their era, winning four times in the early years and ruling the Cup much as the institution had once ruled the country.
Athlone now have a chance to stand beside those faded powers. Win this year and it would be their third FAI Cup in four campaigns, another step in a rapid rise that has redrawn the domestic map.
Athlone rebuild on the fly – and barely miss a beat
They are not just chasing the Cup. Athlone hold a lead at the top of the league, hunting a second successive double with Shelbourne and Galway United trying to reel them in.
That they remain out in front is striking given the churn in the dressing room.
Kelly Brady, top scorer in 2025 and match-winner in last year’s Cup final, left for Crystal Palace in the off-season and has since moved on to Glasgow City. At the other end of the pitch, goalkeeper Megan Plaschko retired at the start of the year, handing the No. 1 jersey to Cypriot understudy Maria Matthaiou.
The American core, though, still drives the team.
New Yorker Dana Scheriff, golden boot winner in 2023, returned to fill the Brady-shaped hole and has done so with ruthless efficiency: 15 league goals in 15 games. Around her, Maddison Gibson and Alexis Strickland have hit form at the right time.
Captain Hannah Waesch, another of the US contingent, insists the standards have not slipped.
“It’s hard because we lost some of our key players from last year, obviously with Kelly Brady being a golden boot winner, but also we lost our starting keeper,” she told RTÉ Sport. “So we lost the girl that was getting it done on our offence and the girl that was getting it done on our defence.
“We got a lot of new girls in from clubs outside Ireland and other clubs in the League of Ireland. The standard hasn’t dropped in the slightest. I think just because there’s a personnel change doesn’t necessarily mean that our standards and expectations have.”
Waesch’s own route to Athlone underlines how unlikely this project once looked. The Texan arrived last year straight out of college, at a time when interest from Europe was hardly overwhelming.
“The agent I was with at the time had two girls at Athlone already and so the window was slowly closing and so I was just like, yeah, let’s give Ireland a go,” she said. “If you’ve already had two [American] girls at Athlone then why not a third? So it wasn’t necessarily on my radar but yeah, happy to be here.
“I feel like Athlone gets a bad rap but I like Athlone. I like how everything’s within walking distance so I don’t necessarily need to have a car and yeah, all the girls are in town so it’s like living with all your best friends.”
Her comparison between US college sport and the League of Ireland strips away any illusions about the realities at this level.
“It [the League of Ireland] is different, especially coming from the university level [in the US] when you’ve got every resource that you could possibly think of thrown at you. It’s a real professional environment. Like if you are a student athlete, that is your full-time job, whereas over here a lot of the girls are part-time.
“There aren’t too many full-time professional players in the League of Ireland is my understanding, and so there’s, you know, girls working part-time jobs and then coming to practice late at night.”
Yet Athlone, with that mix of imports and homegrown players, keep finding ways to win.
Galway’s belief hardens into something more
If anyone has rattled them this season, it’s Galway United.
Back in late May, in Terryland, Galway handed Athlone their only league defeat of the campaign. Two late goals, from Remini Tillotson and Niamh Farrelly, turned the game on its head and left the champions stunned. It was the kind of finish that lingers in the memory when the teams meet again.
Galway themselves have lost just once in the league, a 1-0 defeat away to Bohemians at the start of August. They sit third, a position that has almost become their default in recent seasons, but they hold games in hand and a sense that this group is ready to push through the glass ceiling.
One match from a first-ever Cup final, defender Aoibheann Donnelly is not entertaining any underdog narrative.
“They’re the champions but the last time we met we came out on top so we’re not going in as the underdogs,” she said.
“I think belief is probably a huge thing for us. This year, the good run we had at the start of the year really helped us and we started to get that belief and get that confidence and it just snowballed into the run of games that we had. We were unbeaten until August which is a huge achievement.”
Where Athlone lean heavily on their American axis, Galway are more local in flavour. The squad is largely drawn from the west, with a couple of key additions from abroad and within the league.
Tillotson and Isabella Beletic add a US edge, while goalkeeper Amanda McQuillan and Farrelly have arrived from Shelbourne to deepen the spine of the team. Around them, a core of western players has grown together through seasons of incremental progress.
Donnelly, from Clarecastle, only joined midway through the 2025 campaign, but she walked into a project that already had a clear direction.
“I only signed mid-season last year but it’s been a whole process, like it’s been years in the making,” she said. “They’ve been building something over the last number of years, I think since Phil [Trill] has come in.
“I think this year we’re really close to where the club wants to be. We did well last season but there was probably a few results that we just couldn’t get over the line and we’re hoping to put that right this year.”
Old power vs new hunger
So it comes to this: Athlone, the emerging force chasing history and another double, against Galway, the nearly team that has started to look like something more dangerous.
Athlone know what it takes to navigate these occasions. Galway know they’ve already proved they can beat them when the pressure rises.
One side is trying to join the Suffragettes, Dublin Castle and Benfica on the Cup’s honours list. The other is desperate to carve its name there for the first time.
Only one will walk into a first Sunday in November with a shot at silverware. Which story does this Cup choose next?
