Athlone Town vs Galway United: FAI Women's Cup Semi-Final Showdown
Athlone’s new dynasty meets Galway’s great 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. They are also hunting back-to-back doubles, sitting top of the league with Shelbourne and Galway United in pursuit. For a club that only recently arrived on the national stage, the scale of their rise is startling.
Across the halfway line stand Galway United, a team that has been edging closer and closer to silverware without yet breaking through. One game from a first-ever Cup final, they carry the air of a side tired of being nearly-men – or nearly-women – in a competition that has seen some unlikely names etched into history.
A Cup with ghosts and giants
The FAI Women's Cup is officially in its 52nd year. The story began in 1975 when Limerick beat Civil Service 2-1 at Markets Field, a full 36 years before the women’s national league finally kicked off.
The roll of honour reads like a scrapbook of Irish football oddities. Benfica, not the Lisbon powerhouse but a Waterford club, lifted the trophy three times, the last of them in 1993 with a 15-year-old Ciara Grant starring in a win over College Corinthians at Kilcohan Park, then the home of Waterford soccer.
Before that, the Suffragettes – named in honour of the Pankhursts – dominated the early years, taking three Cups in five seasons in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Dublin Castle collected four titles in the competition’s infancy, echoing their old dominance of the country in Victorian times.
Now Athlone have the chance to join those faded giants, to stand beside the Suffragettes and Dublin Castle with a third Cup in four years. What those early clubs did for the birth of the competition, Athlone are threatening to do for its modern era.
Athlone rebuild on the fly
That they are still in this position at all is an achievement. The champions have been forced to reinvent themselves on the run.
Top scorer Kelly Brady, golden boot winner in the 2025 campaign and match-winner in last year’s Cup final, departed for Crystal Palace in the off-season and has since moved on to Glasgow City. At the other end, goalkeeper Megan Plaschko retired at the beginning of the year, leaving Cypriot understudy Maria Matthaiou to step into the No. 1 jersey.
Losing the player who “got it done” in attack and the one who “got it done” in defence would sink most sides. Athlone simply reloaded.
The American influence remains their driving force. New Yorker Dana Scheriff, golden boot winner in 2023, returned to fill the Brady-shaped gap and has responded with a ruthless 15 league goals in 15 games. Around her, fellow imports Maddison Gibson and Alexis Strickland have found form at just the right time.
Captain Hannah Waesch, another of the US contingent, insists the standards have 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," 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 joined after college last year, with her agent struggling to find a landing spot.
"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."
She has grown fond of a town that often finds itself the butt of jokes.
"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 with her US college experience is stark.
"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 that part-time reality has not stopped Athlone from setting the pace. Nor has it stopped Galway from chasing them down.
Galway’s belief hardens
Galway United are the only side to have beaten Athlone in the league this season. That matters. It lingers.
Back in late May in Terryland, they struck late through Remini Tillotson and Niamh Farrelly to snatch a dramatic win, handing the champions their sole league loss of the campaign. It was the sort of result that can change how a dressing room talks about itself.
Galway’s own record has been near spotless. Their only league defeat so far came at the beginning of August, a 1-0 reverse away to Bohemians. They sit third in the table, a position they have almost made their own in recent years, but crucially hold games in hand on the teams above them.
Now they are one game from a first Cup final, and the mood is far from timid. Aoibheann Donnelly is clear about where they stand.
"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."
Galway’s squad has a different flavour to Athlone’s. While they have dipped into the American market with the likes of Tillotson and Isabella Beletic, much of the group is drawn from the west of Ireland. Goalkeeper Amanda McQuillan and Farrelly arrived from Shelbourne, adding top-level experience to a core that has grown together season on season.
Donnelly, from Clarecastle, only signed midway through the 2025 campaign but walked into a club already on the rise.
"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."
A semi-final with history at stake
So the stage is set. On one side, Athlone, the new power of the women’s game, chasing a place alongside the old Cup aristocracy with a third title in four years and another double in their sights. On the other, Galway, hardened by near misses, armed with the memory of that May win and driven by a sense that their time has finally come.
The Cup has always had room for new names and new stories. The Suffragettes, Benfica of Waterford, Dublin Castle – each had their moment.
Now the question is simple: does this era belong to Athlone’s relentless Americans and their reshaped champions, or is this the year Galway United finally turn promise into a first major honour?
