Aodh Rua, Cúil na gCuirridín
Red Hughs Killygordon

2019, the club’s centenary year, has been another brilliant one Red Hughs. A year after our seniors winning the Junior championship and stepping up a graded, they reached the Intermediate quarter final, the reserves won their first ever league title and reached the Intemediate B championship final. All our underage teams’ – boys and girls – were competitive across the board and Stephen McMenamin represented Donegal with distinction once again.

Our senior men had a tough season on their hands after having no preseason after last year’s long run to the All-Ireland Junior football semi-final but the boy’s fell to the task finishing mid-table in the league being competitive in every game and being very unlucky not to be pushing for promotion after drawing seven of their games and all of their defeats being no more than a point or two. This year was the first time this group of players have competed at the intermediate championship level with the seniors adapting straight away beating Naomh Ultan in the first group game and then drawing against division one opposition Cloughaneely in the second game to secure passage to the quarter final were they narrowly lost out to Naomh Bríd by a point.

The reserves made a bit of history this season winning their first ever trophy, the division three reserve league title after defeating Fanad Gaels in the final. The reserves also came agonizingly close to winning their first ever championship this year, losing out to Cloughaneely in the final of the Intermediate B championship by three points. It was an amazing achievement for the team to get this far considering this was the first time this group of players had competed at that level.

Our senior ladies also had another positive season competing well with a young team and numbers building year on year. Stephen Mc Menamin represented the Donegal senior team with distinction this year winning an Ulster Championship medal and also being nominated for an all-star award – as always, he continues to do his club and county proud.

2019 was another really positive year for Red Hugh’s underage with the club fielding boys’ and girls’ teams at every age group with the number of children taking part increasing yet again. We have also had some great success with our U16 boy’s winning the division 2 northern board league, u11 boys/girls winning the shield in the Burt underage tournament, u8’s winning the cup in the blitz in Glenfin and at the time of writing our minor ladies are waiting to take part in the division 3 final. We have been very competitive across the board with a number of teams reaching finals at various grades and narrowly missing out including our u14 boys who reached the division 2b championship final losing out to Killybegs. Our U16 girls lost out to Buncrana after extra time in the division 2 final, the U16 boys lost out to Naomh Ultan in the all-county division 2 league final and our u10s lost tournament finals in Aghyharan and Ardara.

We have had a number of underage players represent Donegal across the age grades this year Jack Bradley, Caolan McClintock, James Doherty, Maddison White, Niamh Browne, Orla McElchar, Ciara Gallagher and Emma Neeson are all a credit to their club and are being rewarded for their hard work with their county recognition. All in all, it’s great to see the participation levels rising once again this year and none of this could be possible without all the hard work of all our dedicated coaches across all the teams from u6 to u18 boys and girls.