Athlone Town vs Galway United: FAI Women’s Cup Semi-Final Showdown
Athlone’s new dynasty meets Galway’s great ambition. One game, one ticket to the FAI Women’s Cup final.
In only their seventh season as a league club, Athlone Town are chasing a fifth consecutive appearance in the decider and a third Cup in four years. That kind of dominance usually belongs in the history books, alongside the grand old names that once ruled this competition.
They’re getting close.
From Suffragettes to serial contenders
The FAI Women’s Cup is officially in its 52nd year. Limerick claimed the first, beating Civil Service 2-1 at Markets Field in 1975, a full 36 years before the women’s national league finally kicked off.
Those early decades produced some wonderfully idiosyncratic champions. A team called Benfica – Waterford, not Lisbon – lifted the trophy three times, the last in 1993 with a 15-year-old Ciara Grant starring in Kilcohan Park, then the home of Waterford soccer. College Corinthians from Douglas in Cork were the beaten finalists that day.
Before that, the Suffragettes lived up to their name, leading the way in the late 1970s and early 1980s, winning three Cups in five seasons and honouring the Pankhurst legacy in their own footballing way. Dublin Castle, echoing a different kind of rule, took four Cups in the early years.
Now Athlone have a chance to pull level with those faded powers, to stand shoulder to shoulder with Dublin Castle and the rest by landing their third FAI Women’s Cup. They are already chasing a second successive league-and-cup double and sit top of the table, with Shelbourne and Galway United trying to reel them in.
That they’re still out in front is striking given how much the squad has changed.
Athlone reload, not rebuild
Their top scorer from the 2025 campaign, Kelly Brady – the Cup final match-winner and a golden boot winner – left for Crystal Palace in the off-season and has since moved on to Glasgow City. Goalkeeper Megan Plaschko retired at the start of this year, handing the No. 1 shirt to Cypriot understudy Maria Matthaiou.
Yet the American engine at Athlone keeps humming.
New Yorker Dana Scheriff, golden boot winner in 2023, has returned and picked up exactly where she left off: 15 league goals in 15 games. Maddison Gibson and Alexis Strickland have hit form as well, ensuring the attacking threat remains relentless.
For captain Hannah Waesch, another of the US contingent, the standard has not dipped.
"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," Waesch 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, from Texas, arrived in Athlone last year after college. The move was hardly a long-term plan; it came about because her then agent already had two players at the club and the window was closing.
"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 contrast between the League of Ireland and the resource-rich US college game still strikes her.
"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."
Part-time players, full-time standards. Athlone’s success has been built on that contradiction.
Galway’s moment of truth
Standing in their way is a Galway United side who have grown used to looking up at the top two but have yet to claim a major honour. They are again in the hunt on several fronts, and they have already shown they can hurt the champions.
In late May, they handed Athlone their only league defeat of the season. Deep into the game at Terryland, late goals from Remini Tillotson and Niamh Farrelly turned the night Galway’s way. That result still lingers in the background of this semi-final.
Galway’s own unbeaten league run lasted until the start of August, when Bohemians clipped them 1-0 away. They sit third, a position they have almost made their own in recent seasons, but crucially they have games in hand on the teams above.
Now they stand one match from their first ever FAI Women’s Cup final. The scale of that opportunity isn’t lost on them.
"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, speaking with the confidence of a squad that has finally started to believe its own story.
"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 core is homegrown, drawn largely from the west, but with a couple of American additions. Tillotson and Isabella Beletic have added quality, while goalkeeper Amanda McQuillan and Farrelly both arrived from Shelbourne to stiffen the spine.
Donnelly, from Clarecastle, only joined midway through the 2025 season. She walked into a club already climbing.
"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 history. Galway are chasing their first taste of it.
One camp knows the route to the Cup final by heart. The other is desperate to draw a new line on the map.
