Monagea retain Limerick Ladies Senior Football title against St Ailbes

The girls from the West retained their title for the first time in their history after a tense encounter with St Ailbes.

Monagea are the Limerick Ladies Senior Football champions for the fourth time in history after outlasting St Ailbes in Bruff today.

The West outfit retained their crown with a 1-10 to 1-7 win.

Last year’s Munster finalists will now begin their provincial quest in a fortnight’s time.

After successive final losses to St Ailbes in 2019 and 2020, Monagea finally got over the line against the East outfit in Bruff today with a powerful second half paving the way for victory.

Trailing by two at the half, Monagea trailed by three points shortly after the restart. But from here they kept their opponents to just one more score to prevail.

In a tentative opening ten minutes, the sides split a pair of scores with Eimear Ryan replying to Deborah Murphy’s early effort.

Monagea moved four clear just after the quarter of an hour mark as Catriona Davis slotted into the net after being set free by Murphy.

But Mairead Kavanagh was on hand to fire to the net minutes later before she drew the teams level. Grainne McKenna and Kavanagh had Ailbes two clear approaching the half with the score 1-5 to 1-3 in their favour.

McKenna made it a three point game on the resumption but two from Ellie Woulfe and one from Davis had Monagea all square.

McKenna reetablished the lead for Ailbes with Laurie O’Connor given a yellow card and a ten minute sin bin.

Kavanagh and Grace Lee were then both sent to the bin with Davis drawing the teams level. Murphy and Davis helped Monagea into the lead with fifteen to play and they didn’t relent from here, holding resolute to seal the win and title.