RICHARD FITZPATRICKvisits the school that has made a habit of winning with 10 Senior A Ulster titles in a row, a run that came to an end recently
ST LOUIS FACTS
School:St Louis Post-primary School, Monaghan.
Founded:1859.
Number of pupils:700.
Sports played:Athletics, basketball, horse-riding, women's football, swimming.
Women's football titles:Ulster Senior Schools, 1999-2008; All-Ireland Senior Schools, 2000, 2004-2006.
Notable past pupils (women's football):Jenny Greenan, Donna Mulligan, Orla Callan, Slainey Murray, Ciara and Aoife McAnespie.
Notable past pupils (non-sport):Siobhán McKenna, Nuala O'Faolaín, Evelyn Conlon, Bríd Rodgers, Mary O'Donnell
INSIDE TRACK
Name:Hannah Hughes.
Age:17.
Favourite position: forwards or midfield?Forwards – theres too much running in midfield!
Gaelic football hero:Seán Cavanagh from neighbouring rivals, County Tyrone, because, she says, Monaghans mens football isnt great – you have to go somewhere else. He's not big-headed. He carries himself very well.
Schools' Women's football titles:Ulster Senior Schools, 2006-2008; All-Ireland Junior Schools, 2006.
Best sporting memory:Winning the Intermediate All-Ireland title with her club, Emyvale, in 2008
AT THE behest of French cleric Louis Bautain, who was one of the founders of the St Louis order, two nuns pitched up in Monaghan in 1859 to open the first of what became a string of convent schools around Ireland.
Marshalled by a team of nuns in their distinctive box-pleat habits, St Louis, Monaghan, was one of the country’s preeminent girls’ boarding schools during the inter-war years. These days, the school’s girls have an unholy habit of winning football titles.
In 2006, the school won both the junior and senior All-Ireland A schools titles. In fact, it amassed 10 Senior A Ulster titles in a row, a run that came to an end a couple of months ago.
“It’s the first year that we’re not involved after Christmas that I can remember,” laments Pauline Devlin, one of the school’s PE teachers and the hub of its football success.
Devlin enjoys an easy rapport with the school’s charges, preferring to kid rather than reprimand the girls in the yard as they amble back to class after their lunch break, and, as part of her benign management style, she’s not averse to using a bit of reverse psychology.
At one stage, in explaining the grading system, in which there are eight schools in Ulster’s Senior A championship, she says St Louis has always been Senior A, but may look to go Senior B next year.
“I don’t think so. That’ll never happen – no way,” bellows Hannah Hughes, one of the school’s football stars.
There are 89 schools that play women’s football in Ulster, an indication of how popular the sport is. To put the sport’s popularity in perspective, last year’s All-Ireland Women’s football final drew a crowd of 25,000 to Croke Park, points out army-man Dave Mee, who volunteers as a football coach in the school, in comparison to the paltry 10,000 who turned out for the 2008 FAI Cup final, the domestic showpiece for men’s soccer in the country.
Indeed, women’s football is the fastest growing female sport in Ireland, adds Sheena Tally, Ulster’s development officer for women’s football, who happens to be in the school running a pilot coaching and referring programme for its transition year students.
Caoimhe Mohan, only 15, is taking the course. She’s already part of a bygone era. Winner of the All-Ireland Féile na nÓg skills competition two years ago, she played under-14, under-16 and senior last year for the school. Due to a rule change, in an effort to stave off burnout, girls are only allowed to play one grade up now.
About 20 girls from each class year will tog out to play football at St Louis although, despite having a healthy sprinkling of Lithuanian, Latvian and Polish girls in the school, there are no non-nationals playing at present. They’re not believers. Not yet.
“Football is a religion here,” says Devlin. During the football season, training, held after evening study at 7.30pm is on Tuesdays and Thursdays; though this will be augmented by club commitments, so typically girls can expect to train with their club as well on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings in addition to Sunday mornings.
Sometimes a school match might be played on the same day as club training. There would, however, be no shirking the club commitments later that evening.
“You’d have to – Daddy won’t let me not train,” says Hughes, whose father coached her club, Emyvale, to an All-Ireland title last year. There is no family favouritism afforded her on the team, she assures: “If he was giving out to anyone it would probably be me first.”
St Louis don’t have a pitch of its own so training is held at St Carton’s, one of the local boys’ schools, which also has a strong Gaelic football tradition.
“The girls love going training up at St McCarton’s after school – there’s always a massive turnout,” jokes Devlin.
There is little to differentiate between the boys’ and girls’ games except the latter play with a size four ball, although Mee argues women’s football is a purer form – it has less of the pulling and dragging that bedevils the size five football game. This is not to say women’s football is without its bit of chicanery.
“A lot of the forwards,” says Meehan, “if they’d the ball, they’d catch their player’s arm in under their arm to make it look like they’re being (pulled).”
In such a close-knit community, the encounters with local school rivals – some of whom might be fielding club-mates – can be highly charged.
“There’d be rivalry within the schools in the county,” explains Devlin.
“If we were playing Largy, we’d want to be going out there to give them a lesson. You’d want to be going for it.”
“Before they go out, I tell them they’ve no friends on the other team for 60 minutes,” adds Mee.
“But it’s about the taking part as well as the winning. Let me emphasise that,” pipes in Tally, trying to keep a reign on the emotions.
“Please, please, please.”
