St Benildus favourites

A cursory look at the figures on the St Benildus College balance-sheet for their under-16 soccer team indicates that the side is currently in rude health. It has been that way for some time and clearly manager Oisin MacEoin hopes that it will get better.

Naas CBS, who St Benildus meet today in the Leinster League final at Clonshaugh, will be wise to the fact that they face an enormously impressive outfit, who have swept everything in front of them so far this year. Only Naas stand between St Benildus and their extension of quite a remarkable record.

Already the Stillorgan, Dublinbased school have coveted the Leinster Cup, Metropolitan League, All-Ireland Cup and have qualified for the World Schools' tournament in Sardinia in 1999. No other team have won all three trophies in a single year. A fourth victory today would clearly put the record well out of reach for some time.

Not surprisingly, St Benildus have a number of individuals who have made exceptional contributions. Glen Fitzpatrick, who has been capped for Ireland at under-15 level, and Barry Renwick, who has represented Dublin, have scored 21 and 23 goals respectively out of a season total of 76.

The team has played 19 matches, won 19, conceded only 16 goals and has a goal difference of plus 60.

Midfielder John Kennedy has also played for Dublin, while nine players on the side were part of last year's under-14 All-Ireland Schools' Cup-winning side. This means that all nine are eligible for this level next year and three of them, Adam Presch, Stephen Redmond and David White, are eligible for another two years.

In each of their three finals so far this season, St Benildus have won comprehensively. In the All-Ireland final earlier this month they beat St Eunan's, Letterkenny, 3-1 and in the Metropolitan Cup final in April, St Mark's, Tallaght, also went down by the same margin. In March Arklow CC suffered a 7-0 defeat in the Leinster Cup final, which all adds up to a difficult challenge for Naas today.

Whatever the outcome, the World tournament in Italy next year is clearly a standard that many schools would aspire to reach. It is also another challenge for the best side of at this level in the country and a worthy challenge at that.