Athlone Town won the Women's FAI Cup after a penalty shootout victory over Shelbourne at Tallaght Stadium on Sunday.
The win came just five years on from the establishment of a women's team in the club. Athlone Town director of football Michael O'Connor was delighted a victory which he said was achieved despite a lack of government funding.
"Considering that they are doing it on their own, with absolutely no support from the government..." O'Connor told FinalWhistle.ie.
"I'm sick of hearing about the 40 per cent women on each committee that the FAI with the memorandum of understanding have to have. I hope that all sports are cut if they don't have it.
"Why should we suffer for sins of the past? We have athletes coming through. These are not just girls kicking a ball. they are athletes and they give up their time three times a week to train, play. Our underage has to be funded by them or their parents.
19 November 2023; Gillian Keenan of Athlone Town celebrates after scoring her side's second goal during the Sports Direct FAI Women's Cup Final match between Athlone Town and Shelbourne at Tallaght Stadium in Dublin. Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile
"We have great representatives on the Irish underage teams that are quite successful but no funding from the government to the League of Ireland. Horse racing, GAA, women's GAA, greyhounds - and I'm not begrudging any of them it...
"The Minister for Sport wasn't even here. I'd love to know who he sent here or why he doesn't organise a meeting as a Minister for Sport with the clubs and sit down with them and say 'How are ye getting on?'
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"Not only are kids getting an opportunity, both male and female, to pursue their talent in the League of Ireland with the academy system into senior level... You can see with Pats last weekend, the amount of young players coming through.
"We have opened a door for young girls, and I know that the minister went to the World Cup - that was nice, I couldn't go to the World Cup, couldn't afford it; most of my girls couldn't go. Most of them can't afford to play in the league because people think it's just parochial, it's not, we're travelling around the country from Cobh to Derry to Cork to all around and it's great.
"What Mark Scanlon and the league department for football in the country, they will probably never get thanked for it. We are drowning, we are drowning.
"Look at all the kids we take off the streets, the hundreds, thousands of kids we keep of the street with 22 League of Ireland clubs from U13 the whole way through to senior. All the social help that we give them so they can achieve, trying to nurture them.
"Then you have all the kids that don't make a career in it but what about the kids that get scholarships to universities or to college - that affects lives. Do they take that into consideration? That we actually help them get scholarships so the parents don't have to worry about them, that they can afford to go to university and college - no."
As @AthloneTownAFC celebrate the capture of the @FAIWomen’s Cup, the club’s first senior cup in a century, their Director of Football Michael O’Connor discusses the challenges faced by League of Ireland clubs to keep their operations afloat without adequate supports from the… pic.twitter.com/lbregj0AH8
— FinalWhistle.ie (@FinalWhistleIE) November 19, 2023
In O'Connor's mind, the "solution" is that Minister for Sport Thomas Byrne needs to hold discussions with League of Ireland clubs.
"Don't go and say they are not going to give funding or we are paying, that we are the bad boy in the corner," O'Connor continued.
"We are drowning in the League of Ireland academies. I'm not looking at this for myself. I'm getting nothing out of this. This costs me money.
"What I do hope is stop talking and do something. Look at all the Irish internationals that are coming through, both male and female, coming up to a high level, and still nothing. They are representing our country in different parts of the world, coming through our academy system.
"If they are afraid that the FAI are mismanaging, don't take it out on us, come to the clubs and fund them, come directly to us. Say, 'What do you need?'
"I'm not having a go at League of Ireland clubs but when you go to them, we're back in the dark ages with regards to facilities.
"The opportunity I have now is to say the government need to get off their arse."
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