FIVE Things You Should Know About The AIB LGFA All-Ireland Club Finals!

There is a particular kind of December light at Croke Park. Thin as tracing paper. Pale as breath on a cold window. It settles on the Hill and the Hogan the same way it settles on the clubhouses these teams have come from and it makes the place feel less like a stadium and more like a stage waiting for another piece of folklore.

The AIB Ladies Football Club Championship Finals on Saturday, carrying stories from Antrim, Galway and Cavan that feel bigger than the date on the calendar.

Here are five things to know before the ball is thrown in.

Kilkerrin-Clonberne stand on the edge of sporting immortality

The ‘Drive for Five’ is what it’s being coined but the numbers don’t quite do it justice. FOUR straight titles. A run of championship football that stretches beyond two thousand days without defeat. Entire underage teams have grown up in the time it has taken Kilkerrin-Clonberne to brush aside challengers, reload and emerge again in the same relentless shade of red and navy.

Nobody has built a dynasty like this in the women’s club game quite like it. A fifth title would nudge them into the realm where people stop using words like dominance and start using words like era.

Moneyglass arrive with history under their arm and nothing to lose

Every final has a gate-crasher, but Moneyglass are something else entirely. The FIRST Antrim team to make it to a Senior final. The ones who sent last year’s runners-up, Kilmacud Crokes, packing with a semi-final that looked destined to swing until the final whistle. The 1-12 to 1-10 scoreline has followed them around like a receipt for a daring purchase: proof that the leap was real. Cathy Carey and Maria O’Neill have become the pair everyone circles on a teamsheet. One with craft and poise, one with a knack for lowering the temperature in the tightest moments. Ice cold veins. Between them they accounted for 1-9 in the semi-final. A good day’s work in any parish, a transformative one in Antrim. They meet the stingiest defence in the country: Kilkerrin-Clonberne held Comeragh Rangers to three points in the semi-final. Three. Can Moneyglass prise open a door everyone else has found locked?

The Intermediate final may be the tightest battle of the day

If the Senior final is a heavyweight bout, the Intermediate decider between Caltra Cuans and Knockbride has the feel of two teams meeting in a narrow corridor and refusing to let the other pass. Caltra Cuans arrive with Galway’s long shadow behind them. Four previous Galway winners of this competition. A county that knows these days, knows the route, knows the scale of what is expected. Their journey here was decided by a Ciara Murray free struck with the kind of calm that appears when everything else is frantic. St Fechin’s were the better story for fifty-nine minutes; Caltra wrote the last line.

Knockbride took a different road entirely. A 0-4 to 0-3 semi-final reads like a puzzle more than a scoreline, the kind of game where every pass feels as if it has been submitted for planning permission. Ellie Reilly’s late winner arrived almost in apology, a soft tap on the shoulder in the middle of a defensive war. Both are provincial standard-bearers. Both have survived drama. And both will walk into Croke Park knowing the margin between glory and heartbreak is about the width of a breeze.

A Junior final with a Kilkenny twist arrives on Sunday

Muckalee will turn up at Parnell Park on Sunday carrying a small piece of sporting mischief: a Kilkenny club in a national ladies football final. That sentence alone could power half the county’s hurling clichés for a month. They made history in November by winning a first Leinster LGFA Junior title, and AIB even crowned the moment as its ‘Highlight of the Championship.’ Waiting for them are Cromane of Kerry, who prefer their football a little louder. Six goals and seventeen points in a Munster final. High pace, high ambition, and no hesitation when space appears. If Saturday is about legacy and structure, Sunday is about the wild joy of a county discovering something new about itself.

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That December light will settle again on Saturday. It will fall on Galway and Cavan, Antrim and Kerry and Kilkenny. It will fall on players who have carried their clubs across seasons, storms and semi-finals. And when the ball is thrown in, it will feel like one of those moments where history moves a little closer to the pitch, waiting for someone to claim it.

AIB’s celebration of the championship season

As proud sponsors of the AIB GAA, LGFA, and Camogie All-Ireland Championships, AIB has dedicated this season to showcasing the unforgettable Moments of the Championship. The closing stages of these competitions reveal where every precise pass, tenacious tackle and sensational score is powered by the people who stand behind them. AIB holds deep respect for these athletes who, strengthened by their communities, embody local pride and give everything they have to the sport.

Get your tickets here: https://ladiesgaelic.ie/get-your-tickets-now-for-the-2025-aib-all-ireland-club-finals/

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