College Corinthians U17s gear up for FAI Cup final against Corduff

COLLEGE Corinthians recently sealed their place in the final of the U17 FAI Cup and they did so in dramatic fashion.

In the end, a brace apiece from Harvey Skieters, Ben Heinen, and Luke O’Donnell ensured Corinthians defeated Villa in the semi-finals to book a meeting with Corduff in the showpiece occasion on Saturday, May 21 at Home Farm in Dublin.

“It is a really good achievement,” manager Peter Healy said. “Especially away from home, down in Waterford, you never know what you’re going to get when you travel away.

“But no, the lads did very well, it was a bit of a crazy game. You don’t get too many 6-3 games so we did well to score six goals but obviously, we were disappointed to concede three but anyway, we’ll take the positives.

“I felt we played very well, we were 3-1 up with about five minutes to go until half time but then we conceded a penalty, and then they scored with the last kick of the first half.

So we went from being very positive and very happy with the way the lads played, we suddenly went into halftime at 3-3.

“They had to dust themselves down and go again in the second half. We ended up scoring three more so it was a crazy game but we came through it and the lads are playing very well at the moment.

“They are a great bunch, they have great character. Things haven’t gone their way this season in the league and the cups but they are fighting away the whole time and they are coming good at the right time.”

The job for Healy and his coaching staff, Aidan Quilligan, Ben Quilligan, and John O’Brien, whom he was keen to praise, is to find out more about their upcoming opponents over the coming weeks.

But what they do know already is that it is just a great achievement for the club to reach this final, where they will face a talented Corduff side, after a difficult start to the season.

“Technically we are still in the title race but we had a very slow start to the season, it didn’t go well for us but we have regrouped,” added Healy.

"We had a very successful U16s last year but we lost a number of our squad there at the start of the year, I think a lot of teams are in the same boat.

It’s a transition age so we lost about five or six players and it took us a while to get recomposed so while the results didn’t go well up until Christmas, since then we have done very well.

“We are gaining a bit of momentum, we are happy with how we are and we are looking forward to the final.

“Truthfully, we know very little about them. They seem to be a dominant enough force up there as well but we are up for the battle.

“We will try and do a bit of research on them over the next couple of weeks but they will be tough opposition.

“We have got out of Cork most years through the ages but we haven’t quite got there.

“At the start of the year we targeted the national cup, we said ‘this is the year’ so we are looking forward to the final and we’ll see how it goes.”