John Fallon: Peamount's resurgence a boon for the game's outsiders

IRONY wasn’t lost on the victorious Peamount United women’s squad when they found title celebrations on their home patch delayed by TG4’s Underdogs last month.

One of only two clubs within 11-team league not affiliated with a men’s national league entity, Peas had returned from Wexford having secured their fourth championship since the women’s section was launched by the FAI in 2011.

This one was, by a distance, the sweetest.

Not through last-day drama because a 10-match winning sequence regained the crown they’d relinquished to Shelbourne with two games to spare, but the external inhibitors.

The FAI’s leanings towards men’s clubs leading the way was evidenced in 2015 when Raheny United were subsumed into Shelbourne.

Galway FC’s demise last year led to Galway United stepping in and, most notably, Shamrock Rovers ended their eight-year hiatus from senior women’s football just as professional contracts were being permitted.

“We want to come in and change the game here,” came the rallying call from Rovers, all the more credible given the claim was uttered by Peamount’s former director of football.

Jason Carey being headhunted by the Hoops was the precursor to Rovers raiding Greenogue for five Peamount players, including captain Áine O’Gorman and Stephanie Roche.

Double-holders Shelbourne were similarly ravaged in the recruitment drive but the fear centred on Peamount drifting towards obscurity.

That’s what schoolboy clubs have bemoaned amid the FAI applying closed shop criteria to national leagues, excluding the very sector which helped produce a generation of current male internationals Ireland manager Stephen Kenny brackets as exceptional.

Peamount were encouraged to dilute their identity too, previously holding talks