Scoil Bhreanainn Football 2023/2024

We had a very enjoyable  and memorable year in terms of football here at Scoil Bhreanainn this year

Cumann Na mBunscoil

In the beginning of the year we participated in the four teacher school Cumann na mBunscoil competition for the first time in many years. We participated well and had some very competitive games against teams from Mid Kerry and South Kerry in a regional blitz. The boys really performed very well and made it through to the county quarter finals. Here we faced a very strong Scartaglen National School. Unfortunately we came up second best on the day. The boys really fought hard and tried right until the very end. We were all very proud of their efforts.

We were then given a second shot at the Cumann na mBunscoil when we were entered into the shield side of the competition. At this junction we faced Ballyduff National School and after a titanic battle we again came up just short. The boys again gave it their all and kept on going right until the very end!

Mini 7’s

After Christmas a lot of the children in the senior end of the school trained weekly with the help of our local transition year students Jack Keating and Luke O’Sullivan in preparation for the Mini 7’s competition. It was great to have past pupils Jack and Luke helping out the children and it allowed the children to work with players from the Skellig Rangers Senior team which was fantastic! The children really enjoyed the training and worked well in developing their skills and their teamwork skills!

Next up for us was the Mini 7’s competition, as said above the children trained well for this event and thankfully our hard work paid off!

We had a very successful day at the South Kerry schools divisional blitz where the girls had some very competitive games and the boys had a number of good challenges. The boys progressed to the semi finals in Waterville where we faced Scoil Saidhbhin who knocked us out at the same stage in last year’s competition. The boys performed extremely well on the day and we overcame Scoil Saidhbhin this time. We then faced a tough challenge from Waterville and narrowly came out on the right side.

This qualified us for the county finals which were played in Tralee. In our group we faced old foes Scartaglen National School as well as Scoil Naomh Eric in our group. In the first game against Scartaglin we had another massively competitive battle where we just came out second best. We had a good victory against Scoil Naomh Eric in game two.

This qualified us for the quarter finals where we faced off against Faha NS. It was a great game that was nip and tuck throughout with us getting out narrowly on the right side of the result!

We then faced Nagle Rice of Milltown in the semi finals of the competition again it served up a brilliant game with both sides playing some fantastic football, thankfully we just edged out a result and made it through to the county final where we would face off against old rivals Scartaglin National School.

The final game of this competition will live long in the memories of the children involved as it was for some their first taste of a big occasion in Austin Stack Park. The boys played with heart, passion and fought right up to the final whistle, the game ebbed and flowed with some amazing pieces of skill shown by both teams, in the end however it was not to be our day we were pipped at the death and just came up short.

It was a fantastic achievement by all involved to get to that stage of the county competition, for a rural area like us here in Portmagee to be able to mix it with the larger schools with a far greater pick is a massive achievement. To put it into perspective it was 15 years since a team from South Kerry had gotten to a county Mini 7’s final. As for ourselves, Scoil Bhreanainn, the last group of children from here to get to a mini sevens county final, went on to have amazing careers for Skellig Rangers!

The future is bright for this group of young children as long as they continue to work hard and listen to all their coaches and mentors. Hopefully the children will use the experiences they gained from the Mini 7’s and Cumann na mBunscoil competitions this year and take these with them in their football careers going forward!