\u200bAll-Ireland junior football final<\/p>\n
London 5-12 USGAA 0-17<\/p>\n
By Paul Keane at Croke Park<\/p>\n
Shaun McCready netted twice at Croke Park as London finally regained the All-Ireland JFC title, coming good after narrow final defeats in 2024 and 2025.<\/p>\n
McCready’s second goal, and London’s third, arrived in the 47th minute and put Paul Coggins’ side eight points clear at that stage.<\/p>\n
And two late goals, from substitute Niall McGivney and Alifie McNulty, applied the gloss to a big win as London captured their seventh junior title.<\/p>\n
It’s their first win at the grade since 1986 and their previous six titles came before the competition was reconstituted in 2022, mainly catering for overseas units.<\/p>\n
London had pushed hard for titles in the last two years but lost to New York in back-to-back finals.<\/p>\n
They put a big push on to get over the line in 2026 and after retaining the All-Ireland Britain title, beating Warwickshire in that final last month, they overcame old rivals New York in the All-Ireland semi-final on Friday evening.<\/p>\n
With both sides requiring extra time to win their semi-finals in Abbotstown on Friday, it was a question of which team would cope better with the fatigue for the final.<\/p>\n
London appeared to do the better job of it, hitting the ground running and putting 1-4 on the board before USGAA had even got off the mark.<\/p>\n
Redican, from the Tara club, sniped 1-1 of that tally, fisting a point before being played in for an 11th minute goal by Eoin McGivney.<\/p>\n
But as the London kick-out malfunctioned – they lost five in a row at one stage – a USGAA side drawing players from Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco and Boston were provided with a platform to haul themselves right back into the contest.<\/p>\n
They responded with seven points in a row, three from wing-back Ronan Orford, to tie the game up by the 21st minute, 1-4 to 0-7.<\/p>\n
Crucially, USGAA never actually took the lead and when McCready scored his first goal, just seconds before half time, lobbing the goalkeeper with what appeared a point attempt, London 2-5 to 0-8.<\/p>\n
London captain Noel Maher, fresh from raising an orange flag in Friday evening’s semi-final, boomed over two huge two-pointers in the third quarter.<\/p>\n
Brian Kennedy’s USGAA briefly got it going again with three points in a row, from Declan Kelly, Michael Moylan and sub Michael Kerr.<\/p>\n
And later on they scored four points in a row, but the damage had been done at that stage, McCready’s second goal, and London’s third, coming in the 47th minute.<\/p>\n
McCready redirected a long delivery to the net to leave London 3-12 to 0-13 up at that stage.<\/p>\n
McGivney made it goal number four for London in the 59th minute, his shot ghosting beyond a group of players to the net and McNulty was fed by McCready for the fifth at the death.<\/p>\n
London scorers: Shaun McCready 2-2, Conor Redican 1-2 (0-1f), Alfie McNulty 1-1, Noel Maher 0-4 (2 tpf), Niall McGivney 1-0, Se\u00e1n Gaynor 0-1, Terry Gallagher 0-1, Caolan Doyle 0-1 (0-1f).<\/p>\n
USGAA scorers: Eoin Gormley 0-5 (0-1f), Michael Moylan 0-4 (0-3f), Ronan Orford 0-3, Dylan Murtagh 0-2 (0-1f), Michael Kerr 0-2 (0-2f), Declan Kelly 0-1.<\/p>\n
London: Caol\u00e1n Doyle; John Lavelle, Jack Power, Ryan McCready; Eoin McGivney, Conor Redican, Donncha Byrne; Conor Redmond, Noel Maher; Terry Gallagher, Luke Morahan, Matthew Joyce; Se\u00e1n Gaynor, Shaun McCready, Alfie McNulty.<\/p>\n
Subs: Jamie Murphy for Byrne 26, Se\u00e1n Hickey for Gaynor 43, Christopher Morris for Redmond 48, Niall McGivney for Joyce 57.<\/p>\n
USGAA: Brian Bowler; Se\u00e1n Gavin, Owen Sheehan, Conor Coyle; Owen Ward, Jack Lynch, Ronan Orford; Eoin Morrissey, Mark Dunphy; Charlie Sheehan, Brian McDaid, Dylan Murtagh; Declan Kelly, Eoin Gormley, Michael Moylan.<\/p>\n
Subs: Martin Murphy for Sheehan 21, Michael Kerr for Dunphy 41, Richard Lenke for Moylan 45, Tristan Kelly for Ward 48, Stephen Ward for Kelly 53.<\/p>\n
Referee: Kieran Eannetta (Tyrone).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u200bAll-Ireland junior football final London 5-12 USGAA 0-17 By Paul Keane at Croke Park Shaun McCready netted twice…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-546119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}