Athlone Town vs Galway United: FAI Women’s Cup Showdown

Athlone’s modern dynasty meets Galway’s rising force as history looms in the FAI Women’s Cup.

In only their seventh season as a league club, Athlone Town stand one win away from a fifth consecutive Cup final and a chance to cement themselves alongside some of the competition’s old royalty. Galway United, still chasing a first major honour, are determined to make sure that story gets ripped up.

A Cup steeped in strange and brilliant history

The FAI Women’s Cup is officially in its 52nd year. The first final on record dates back to 1975, when Limerick beat Civil Service 2-1 at Markets Field. That was 36 years before the women’s national league even kicked off.

The roll of honour reads like a tour through another era.

A side called Benfica – not the Lisbon giants, but a Waterford club – won the Cup three times, the last of them in 1993. A 15-year-old Ciara Grant lit up that final, as they swept aside College Corinthians at Kilcohan Park, then the heartbeat of Waterford football before the RSC took over.

Before that, the Suffragettes were the standard-bearers, a team whose very name nodded to the Pankhursts. They claimed three Cups in five seasons in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Dublin Castle followed, lifting four trophies in the early years and dominating the competition in a way that echoed their Victorian-era hold on the country itself.

Athlone now have the chance to draw level with those faded giants. Two Cups already in the cabinet. A shot at a third in four years. And, hanging tantalisingly in the air, the prospect of back-to-back doubles as they lead the league with Shelbourne and Galway United giving chase.

Athlone’s rebuild on the fly

That Athlone are still setting the pace is remarkable given the churn in their squad.

Top scorer Kelly Brady, the 2025 golden boot winner and match-winner in last year’s Cup final, left for Crystal Palace in the off-season and has since moved on again to Glasgow City. At the other end of the pitch, goalkeeper Megan Plaschko retired at the start of the year, leaving Cypriot understudy Maria Matthaiou to step into the No. 1 role.

The American influence has not faded, though. It has intensified.

Golden boot winner in 2023, New Yorker Dana Scheriff is back and firing. Fifteen league goals in 15 games. A ready-made answer to the Brady void. Around her, fellow imports Maddison Gibson and Alexis Strickland have driven standards higher rather than allowed them to slip.

From the captain’s armband, Texan midfielder Hannah Waesch sees continuity, not decline.

"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 arrived last year straight out of college, her move to Athlone born as much from timing as long-term planning.

"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. 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."

The culture shock was less about the football and more about the ecosystem around it.

"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’s part-timers keep turning up, keep winning, keep chasing history.

Galway’s moment of truth

If anyone knows how to knock them off course, it’s Galway United.

Back in late May, they handed Athlone their only league defeat of the season. Deep into the game at Terryland, with the champions eyeing another result, Remini Tillotson and Niamh Farrelly struck late to flip the script and claim a statement win for the westerners.

Galway have tasted defeat just once themselves in the league this year, a 1-0 loss away to Bohemians at the start of August. They sit third – a position they’ve almost made their own in recent seasons – but crucially with games in hand on the sides above them.

Now they stand one step from a first ever Cup final, and the mood in the camp reflects that shift in stature.

"They're the champions but the last time we met we came out on top so we're not going in as the underdogs," said Aoibheann Donnelly.

"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."

Galway’s squad has a more local feel, built around players from the western half of the country. There are American touches – Tillotson and Isabella Beletic among them – but the core is homegrown. Goalkeeper Amanda McQuillan and Farrelly arrived from Shelbourne, adding experience and edge to a side that had already been edging upwards.

Donnelly, from Clarecastle, only joined midway through the 2025 season. She walked into a project already in motion.

"I only signed mid-season last year but it's been a whole process, like it's been years in the making. 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."

Athlone are chasing a dynasty. Galway are chasing a breakthrough. One will move a step closer to their story’s next chapter. Which one is ready to handle the weight of it?