Derry’s Leah Brewster goes back to her roots in Ulster final clash with Antrim

By Daire Walsh

WHILE it won’t be her first time to compete at this stage of the competition, Saturday’s TG4 Ulster Junior Football Championship final against title holders Antrim is set to be a special one for Derry defender Leah Brewster.

When the same two sides clashed in last year’s decider at Healy Park in Omagh, Brewster lined up for the Oakleaf county alongside her sister Grace. While her elder sibling is currently working her way back from injury, Leah is due to play a pivotal role as Derry aim to get the better of the Saffrons in a venue that she has a deep connection to.

The main county grounds of Fermanagh GAA, Brewster Park in Enniskillen is named after her late grandfather Michael ‘Mickey’ Brewster – who represented the Erne County in football with considerable distinction.

This will be Leah’s first time to play on this particular patch and with a TG4 Ulster intermediate football championship final between Cavan and Monaghan also being held there at 5pm, she sees today as an excellent showcase for Brewster Park.

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“It’s named after my grandfather and then it’s in Enniskillen, which is where my Dad grew up. He’s more excited that I’m playing down there than I am! This is my first time ever playing down in Brewster Park. The same, my sister has never played down in it. She’s even more gutted [to be injured for the game],” Brewster said.

“It will be a big day for all the matches. It will be good to get the publicity down a bit on Brewster Park. I think they were doing renovations, so it’s probably a boost to them.”

It is perhaps unsurprising to hear her father is thrilled to see his daughter lining out in Brewster Park, given it is a ground he graced on many occasions for Fermanagh and Enniskillen Gaels during his own playing days.

A winner of two All-Ireland Senior ‘B’ Football Championship titles with the Erne men, Paul Brewster also won a Sigerson Cup crown with Queen’s University Belfast (where Leah is currently studying computer science) in 1993 before lining out for Ireland in an International Rules series against Australia five years later.

He was also part of the management team when an O’Donovan Rossa, Magherafelt side featuring his two daughters won the Derry intermediate football championship with a final victory over St Treas, Ballymaguigan in 2024 and Leah explains he is always on hand to offer advice when the opportunity presents itself.

Leah Brewster (7) with her sister Grace and their father Paul in the colours of Magherafelt

“Definitely after every match, if he’s down at it, I look forward to the post-match analysis. If he’s driving down from the match, I’ll get a three hour journey of what went wrong, what would you do better, how we can improve.

“I think it helps even seeing it from his perspective and then you’re able to see it yourself. ‘Oh if we moved this way, it would help’. Different wee things like that, he’s able to pick up on.

“Because he has probably been watching from last year. He’s able to see the girls all play better and he’s definitely seen a drastic improvement in the team this year as well. It definitely helps having his advice in the background sometimes in my ear.”

For a decent chunk of his time on the Fermanagh panel, Leah’s father was joined by her uncle Tom Brewster – who famously kicked the winning point for his county in an All-Ireland senior football championship quarter-final against Armagh at Croke Park in 2004.

Although having the name Brewster is what catches the eye when you see her name listed on a match programme or a team sheet, there is also Gaelic football heritage on the opposite side of her family. Her mother Brenda (maiden name McKenna) is a native of Derry and was one of the very first players to don the Oakleaf jersey in ladies football.

“Everyone always talks about my Dad and Uncle being the footballers, but my Mum was actually on the first ever Derry ladies team. Sometimes that’s never really brought up, which is quite funny. It’s funny now how she was on one of the first-ever Derry ladies teams ever formed and her two daughters then were playing last year,” Brewster explained.

That being said, Brewster nevertheless acknowledges how much of an inspiration it was for her to hear stories about the exploits of her father and uncle with Fermanagh from times gone by.

Family ties

“Hearing the stories of my Dad and my uncle playing, they definitely encouraged me to then take it up. Not that it’s through those stories I kept it up, because even once you start, I feel like it just captures you. I just love playing Gaelic. It’s like an escape almost from everything else. You’re always focused on the match and nothing else that is going on.”

Since losing narrowly to Louth at the semi-final stage of the competition in 2018 – a year on from being defeated in a replayed decider by Fermanagh – Derry have found it difficult to compete at the business end of the TG4 All-Ireland junior football championship.

Wins have also been hard to come by for the Oakleaf in Division 4 of the Lidl National Football League, while the past two years has seen them losing TG4 Ulster JFC finals to Fermanagh (2024) and Antrim (2025).

However, Brewster believes there have been signs of encouragement since she joined the Derry senior panel midway through last year’s inter-county season and that a victory over Antrim in the provincial showpiece today would be a massive boost for the county.

“The past couple of years, although we maybe haven’t seen it through results, there has been improvements. The way that we’re playing, it is all getting stronger and I think even the group of girls that we have at the moment are definitely a lot closer knit.,” Brewster added.

“As a team, we want to win at the weekend and I think it would just be a big boost as well. It has been coming and hopefully at the weekend we get the result that we’ve been training almost all season for.”