Soccer

Rice College Westport win FAI Senior Cup final defeating Blackrock College on penalties

Mayo school claim title after sudden death

Rice College players celebrate with the Dr Tony O'Neill Senior National Cup after the game. Photograph: Matt Browne/Sportsfile
Rice College players celebrate with the Dr Tony O'Neill Senior National Cup after the game. Photograph: Matt Browne/Sportsfile
Kevin Egan
Wed Mar 12 2025 - 16:38
FAI Schools National Senior (Dr Tony O’Neill) Cup final: Rice College, Westport 2 (Durkan 63, 106) Blackrock College 2 (Sheahan 76, Lavin 110)
After extra-time, Rice College win 5-4 on penalties

A schools cup final that packed a season’s amount of incident and drama into the final hour of action culminated in Rice College being crowned the national senior champions for the first time in their history in Athlone.

Backboned by the majority of the team that lost last year’s Junior (Tom Ticher) Cup final a year ago at the same venue, it looked for the opening 45 minutes as if Blackrock College’s superior physicality and power might give them the edge, even though that period passed by without either goalkeeper being seriously tested.

The Westport side posed much more of a threat after the interval when they tried to work the ball into attacking areas much more methodically rather than looking to simply hit lone striker Jack O’Malley from 20 yards away or more, but Blackrock also found it easier to break through, with Jack Kelly testing Michael McDonnell from close range in the first minute.

Harry Weir and Geordy Lavin down the left-hand side showed outstanding craft and ingenuity to open up the Rice defence on a couple of occasions, but the breakthrough never came, and instead it was Rían Durkan who broke the deadlock, coolly rolling the ball to the net after Jack O’Malley’s composure wrong-footed the Blackrock defence.

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That only served as the cue for Blackrock to step up the pressure, and when Cormac Sheahan headed the equaliser from Conor O’Neill’s corner, the South Dublin side and 2003 national champions had all the momentum.

Nothing came of it however, meaning that the contest moved to overtime, when Durkan again gave Rice the lead when he slipped a low shot inside the near post with four minutes of overtime remaining.

Those four minutes were as frantic as you’d imagine, with Rice College missing a chance to score while Ronan Ffrench was caught upfield, and that looked fatal when Lavin curled a free around the wall and into the bottom corner with the last kick.

Penalties began, the drama continued. Evan Durkan set the tone by opening with a Panenka chip, McDonnell’s save on Lavin looked to give Rice College the upper hand, only for two saves from Ffrench to leave Peter Walsh with a kick to win it.

A thunderous strike off the bottom of the crossbar, bouncing a yard out from the goal line, showed the wafer-thin margin between victory and defeat, all the more when captain Alex Halpin hit the top corner with the first sudden death kick and Jack Luff’s pulled effort wide of the post confirmed the Mayo school’s win.

RICE COLLEGE: M McDonnell; E Moran (T McGeough FT), M Staunton, C McGing, S Casey; Jamie O’Malley (D Reynolds 56), K Conway (C Cannon 71, S Popov 104); A Halpin, E Durkan, R Durkan; Jack O’Malley.

BLACKROCK COLLEGE: R Ffrench; D Noonan (R Dowling 84), J Luff, C Sheahan, H Weir; S Mooney, C O’Neill; C Hearty (J Gleeson Halpin 65), P Walsh, G Lavin; J Kelly (A Quinn 56).

Referee: Jay Merriman.