Athlone Town vs Galway United: FAI Women's Cup Semi-Final Showdown

In only their seventh season as a league club, Athlone Town are already chasing history. Four FAI Women's Cup finals in a row behind them, a fifth now within touching distance, and the chance to draw level with some of the great old names of the women’s game.

Standing in their way: a Galway United side still hunting their first major trophy, but no longer content to play the plucky outsider.

A Cup with ghosts and giants

The FAI Women's Cup is officially in its 52nd year. Limerick lifted the first, edging Civil Service 2-1 at Markets Field in 1975, a full 36 years before the women’s national league took shape.

The roll of honour reads like a scrapbook of Irish football’s past. A Waterford club called Benfica – not that one – claimed three Cups, the last in 1993 when a 15-year-old Ciara Grant lit up Kilcohan Park, then the home of Waterford soccer before the RSC era.

Before them, the Suffragettes carried the spirit of the Pankhursts into the late 70s and early 80s, winning three Cups in five seasons. Dublin Castle ruled the early years with four titles, echoing a very different kind of dominance from a different century.

Now Athlone, relative newcomers, have barged into that company. Two FAI Cups already in the cabinet, both won in the last three seasons. A third in four years would pull them level with those faded giants and complete a second successive league-and-cup double. They sit top of the table, Shelbourne and Galway United breathing hardest down their necks.

Athlone rebuild on the fly

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

Kelly Brady, top scorer in the 2025 campaign 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 shirt to Cypriot understudy Maria Matthaiou.

The American spine, though, remains the club’s driving force.

Golden boot winner in 2023, New Yorker Dana Scheriff has returned and picked up exactly where she left off: 15 league goals in 15 games. Around her, fellow imports Maddison Gibson and Alexis Strickland have hit form at the right time.

Captain Hannah Waesch, another of the US contingent, insists the standards haven’t budged.

"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 tells 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, landed in Athlone after finishing college last year. It was hardly a long-planned move.

"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 came off the pitch as much as on 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 those late nights have Athlone on the brink of another final.

Galway’s belief hardens

Galway United know exactly how high the bar is. They’re still waiting for their first appearance in an FAI Women's Cup final, but this season has carried a different feel.

They handed Athlone their only league defeat of the campaign back in late May. That night in Terryland, late goals from Remini Tillotson and Niamh Farrelly flipped the game and stunned the champions.

Galway’s own unbeaten run lasted until early August, when a 1-0 defeat away to Bohemians finally checked their surge. They sit third in the table, a position they’ve almost owned in recent years, but crucially they hold games in hand on the teams above.

One win now would take them somewhere they’ve never been.

"They're the champions but the last time we met we came out on top so we're not going in as the underdogs," says Aoibheann Donnelly, speaking with the assurance of a side that has grown into itself.

"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 heartbeat than Athlone’s. Much of the group hail from the west, with the core supplemented by a small American influence – notably Tillotson and defender Isabella Beletic – and the arrivals of goalkeeper Amanda McQuillan and Farrelly from Shelbourne.

Donnelly, from Clarecastle, only came in midway through the 2025 season. She walked into a project already gathering speed.

"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."

History or a first taste of it?

So the stage is set. Athlone, chasing a third FAI Cup in four seasons and another double, leaning on an American-led core that has refused to let standards slip. Galway, driven by a largely homegrown group, hardened by a long unbeaten run and armed with the knowledge that they’ve already floored the champions once.

One club trying to build a dynasty in fast-forward. The other desperate to turn years of quiet progress into something tangible.

Only one gets to walk out on Cup final day.