Maria O’Neill’s point with just 15 seconds remaining won the All-Ireland Junior Football Championship for Antrim in a dramatic final against Carlow at Croke Park. <\/p>\n
After had got on Carlow on level-terms in the closing stages through Megan Townsend’s goal, McCann struck the decisive blow late on for secure a 1-13 to 2-9 win for the Saffrons.<\/p>\n
Antrim made a perfect start in Dublin when Theresa Mallon capitalised on a poor pass from goalkeeper Nicole Hanley to net inside two minutes.<\/p>\n
The Saffrons extended their advantage thanks to Orlaith Prenter, O’Neill and the retiring Aine Tubridy, but Carlow, in their first All-Ireland decider, fought back and trailed by 1-5 to 0-6 at the break. <\/p>\n
Cliodhna Ni She’s sixth point of the day further reduced Antrim’s lead, but the Ulster county responded through Prenter and Bronagh Devlin.<\/p>\n
However Carlow refused to wilt and Aibha Kiernan fired into the Antrim net in the 48th minute to put the Barrowsiders ahead for the first time in the contest.<\/p>\n
Prenter, two points from O’Neill and Aoibheann Monaghan put Antrim back in front head into the final few minutes, but there was late drama to come.<\/p>\n
Townsend netted in the 59th minute to set up a grandstand finish, but O’Neill denied Carlow a replay when she rounded off a breakaway move to send the trophy back to Ulster.<\/p>\n
The victory means that Antrim have won the Junior All-Ireland for a record-equalling fourth time, and makes amends for the 2025 final loss to Louth.<\/p>\n
Also a Croke Park, Fermanagh face Roscommon in the Intermediate All-Ireland final at 13:45 BST, before the senior decider between Kerry and Galway at 16:15 BST.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maria O’Neill’s point with just 15 seconds remaining won the All-Ireland Junior Football Championship for Antrim in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":580382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-580381","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\/580381","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=580381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/580382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}