THE mighty men of Goleen were one of the stories of 2024 and their celebrations for a famous year will continue at the West Cork Sports Star Awards gala night on Saturday, January 18th.
The Celtic Ross Hotel in Rosscarbery will be braced for an invasion from the Mizen peninsula, as the Goleen footballers accept the 2024 West Cork Sports Star Special Achievement Award that recognises their incredible story.
Context is everything here. On December 28th, 2023, a few weeks after losing the county junior B football final to Douglas, Goleen footballers held a team meeting to discuss their next move. Having won the Carbery junior B football title, Goleen had the opportunity to move to the junior A ranks – but the players felt that they had unfinished business at junior B.
Since 2019 Goleen lost four county junior B footballs, between both the confined and open championships, and the players didn’t want to move up to junior A without winning the county junior B title that had eluded them. They turned down the option to move to junior A and went again in 2024.
‘We won the West Cork junior B divisional championship last year and that gave us the option of going up to junior A. But we had lost four county finals in as many years so we felt we had unfinished business in the grade and that in a couple of years time we would be ruing the fact that we hadn’t won a countY,’ captain Padraig Reidy explained.
Fifth time lucky, it proved, as on July 7th, 2024, Goleen defeated Ballyphehane 0-11 to 0-9 after extra-time to win the county confined junior B football title. They scaled their Everest, banishing those years of heartbreak. The Goleen story is about a group of players who backed themselves to go further than any team from the club had ever gone before, and they delivered. The celebrations are the stuff of legend.
As well as that, Goleen defended their Carbery junior B title and also won the Carbery-Beara Division 2 Football League to finish the season with three trophies, and just missed out on a county junior B double after a loss to Douglas in December. Still, what a year for Goleen, worthy winners of the 2024 West Cork Sports Star Special Achievement Award.
