Rocky’s Rebels ready to fulfil their destiny

In any other scenario, a club like St. Michael’s/St. Ronan’s reaching a county final and having a tilt at their first ever adult title would be a romantic story that would see neutral support gravitate their way.

However, the Saints’ story takes a back seat this Friday night when the ball is thrown in at 8.15 p.m.. Instead there should be a large home crowd in Kilbride to see ‘Rocky’s Rebels’ — the group that has captured the hearts of so many football supporters all across Roscommon and beyond.

Máire Lohan, one of many players who soldiered alongside her former team-mate, Rochelle ‘Rocky’ Mullaney, as Kilbride won five senior titles in a row less than a decade ago, told the story of how this group came to be.

“Rochelle’s partner Mick (Murray) had this dream of setting up a second team this year to play junior football in her memory. He bandied the idea about around Christmas, he got a few people saying yes and no, and more saying ‘ah you’re not serious!

 “There’s a great mixture of girls — there are girls who would have played on the five-in-a-row teams, there are women who are older than that, there are women younger than that, there are U-16s and it’s great to give them a taste of adult football. We have girls who haven’t played in ten or 12 years, and they just came in because it was in memory of Rochelle.”

However what started as a tribute and a social outlet has quickly seen many of these multiple-time medal winners rediscover their sharp competitive instincts.

“Our first game didn’t go to plan, we were well-beaten by Shannon Gaels and we came away very disillusioned. But as the games went on, we fell back into the old ways and memory kicked in,” reflected Lohan.

“At the start of the year, the idea was that this would be a bit of fun, we might have a few nights out and all that. We’ve had one night out. Instead, everyone wants to be out training and putting in the work. That all came flooding back pretty quickly and very naturally to everybody.” 

Kilbride’s semi-final win over Strokestown was a slight upset to anyone outside the camp, but not so much as St. Michael’s/St. Ronan’s turning over a Roscommon Gaels team that was many people’s favourites for this championship.

“Last year was the first year that we won four games in a season,” said Aoife Guckian, who was a mere eight years of age when she lined out for the first-ever club team, an U-12 side in 2011. Current full-back Caitriona Cox coached that side, and since then Guckian has been there for every big marker of progress along the way.

“We’re hitting these little milestones since we were formed as a club. It started with fielding teams, then winning a game felt like winning the lottery as such.

“Last year we got to a final (Junior C) and we let the pressure get to us a little bit but now that we know what it feels like to lose a final, we’ve a real bite to us this year. Training, matches, everything is different.

“We probably didn’t see ourselves in Junior B, but beating Roscommon Gaels was particularly sweet and that raised our hopes a lot.” 

This wasn’t the final that anyone expected, and regardless of who wins, the story of the 2025 Castlerea Vehicle Recycling Junior B winners will be one of the big stories of the showpiece weekend for ladies’ football in Roscommon.

It’s been a Rocky road well-travelled for the Saints so far, but the sense of destiny about Kilbride, on their home field, might just carry them through.