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

Athlone’s new dynasty meets Galway’s great unfinished story in a semi-final that feels bigger than the bracket suggests.

In only their seventh season as a league club, Athlone Town are chasing a fifth consecutive FAI Women's Cup final and a third title in four years. That kind of dominance usually belongs to the old names on the roll of honour, not a modern upstart from the Midlands.

Yet here they are, one game away again, staring down a Galway United side still searching for their first major trophy but building something that looks increasingly serious.

A Cup with ghosts on the touchline

Officially, the FAI Women's Cup is in its 52nd year. The records start in 1975, when Limerick beat Civil Service 2-1 at Markets Field. That was 36 years before the first official women’s national league even kicked off.

The early years read like a different sport. A Waterford club called Benfica – not that Benfica – lifted the trophy three times, the last in 1993 when a 15-year-old Ciara Grant lit up Kilcohan Park, then the home of Waterford soccer. College Corinthians, drawn from around Douglas in Cork, were the beaten finalists that day.

Before them, the Suffragettes set the tone, winning three Cups in five seasons in the late 1970s and early 1980s, their very name a nod to the Pankhursts. Dublin Castle, echoing a different kind of rule, took four early titles and imposed themselves on the competition the way their namesake once did on the country.

Athlone now stand on the brink of joining those faded giants. Victory this year would give them three Cups in four seasons and pull them level with Dublin Castle on the honours list. They are also chasing back-to-back doubles and sit top of the league, with Shelbourne and Galway their closest hunters.

Athlone’s rebuild on the fly

That they are still in this position at all is a story in itself.

Their top scorer from 2025, Kelly Brady – match-winner in last year’s Cup final – left for Crystal Palace in the off-season and has since moved on to Glasgow City. Goalkeeper Megan Plaschko retired at the start of this year, handing the No. 1 shirt to Cypriot understudy Maria Matthaiou.

Big players gone. Big holes to fill. Standards, though, have refused to budge.

The American core continues to drive Athlone forward. New Yorker Dana Scheriff, golden boot winner in 2023, has returned and is tearing through the league again: 15 goals in 15 games. Around her, fellow imports Maddison Gibson and Alexis Strickland have hit form at the right time.

Captain Hannah Waesch, another from the US production line, insists the identity has survived the turnover.

"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, only arrived last year after finishing college, her path to the Midlands as unlikely as Athlone’s rise.

"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 adjustment from US college sport to the League of Ireland has been stark.

"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 the part-time reality hasn’t stopped Athlone operating like a juggernaut. The league table and their Cup record say as much.

Galway, the thorn in the champions’ side

If there is one team that has truly unsettled Athlone this season, it’s Galway United.

Back in late May, in Terryland, Athlone suffered their only league defeat of the campaign. Galway struck late, with goals from Remini Tillotson and Niamh Farrelly turning the game at the death and sending a jolt through the title race.

Galway themselves have only lost once in the league, a 1-0 defeat away to Bohemians at the start of August. They sit third, a position they have almost made their own in recent seasons, but crucially they hold games in hand on the teams above them.

Now they stand one match away from their first ever FAI Women's Cup final. The stage is new. The mood is not tentative.

"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.

"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."

This is a Galway side with a distinctly local spine. Most of the squad hail from the west, with key additions sprinkled in. Americans Tillotson and Isabella Beletic add bite, while goalkeeper Amanda McQuillan and Farrelly have come in from Shelbourne to stiffen the core.

Donnelly, from Clarecastle, only joined midway through the 2025 season, but she walked into a project already gathering pace.

"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 equation is simple, even if the stakes are not.

Athlone are chasing legacy: a fifth straight final, a third Cup in four years, another step towards a modern dynasty in a competition once ruled by names like Suffragettes, Benfica and Dublin Castle.

Galway are chasing something more basic, more raw: the first major honour to match years of quiet progress and a league campaign that has finally started to reflect their ambition.

The champions know the route to the Aviva. The challengers have already proved they can bloody Athlone’s nose.

Now the question is whether Galway can do it again when the prize is history, not just three points.