Top scorer award the icing on the cake for Antrim ace O’Neill

By Daire Walsh

AT the end of an inter-county season that saw her collecting a second TG4 All-Ireland junior football championship title, Antrim’s Maria O’Neill has acknowledged that winning the ZuCar Golden Boot award ‘adds to the year as a whole’.

Courtesy of an outstanding haul of 11-20 (53) – including a 0-4 haul in the Saffron County’s nail-biting JFC decider victory over Carlow at Croke Park on August 2 – O’Neill emerged as top scorer across all three grades in the TG4 All-Ireland Championships. Her nearest competitor for this prize was provincial rival Eimear Smyth, whose 0-5 tally in Fermanagh’s TG4 All-Ireland intermediate football championship final defeat to Roscommon left her six points adrift of O’Neill on 4-35 (47).

O’Neill had also been in the mix for the Golden Boot in 2025, finished second to Dublin’s Hannah Tyrrell with a personal total of 8-19 in a season that saw Antrim losing out to Louth in an All-Ireland junior showpiece. The St Ergnat’s, Moneyglass attacker has established herself as a key sharpshooter for the Saffrons, but she is very quick to credit her team-mates for making it possible for her to accumulate big tallies within games.

“It’s something I kind of tried not to pay too much attention to obviously in the lead-up to the All-Ireland final. To get the result that we did on the day and now to get the Golden Boot, I’m happy with that. It’s almost just like a wee bonus. It’s just one of those things where it adds to the year as a whole,” O’Neill remarked.

“As I said before, my scores are just a reflection on the hard work that the rest of the team have put in all over the pitch. The turnovers and everything. I’m doing the easy job here.

“It doesn’t matter who scores, as long as there’s a score at the end of every play. You have massive players like Lara [Dahunsi] and Orlaith Prenter also contributing to it. There’s not too much pressure on me.”

Having returned to the fold midway through the championship, O’Neill’s club colleague Prenter made a huge impact in Antrim’s All-Ireland final victory – scoring 0-6 (1 free) over the course of their duel with Carlow.

The Barrowsiders kept close tabs on O’Neill herself for much of their meeting at GAA HQ, before she subsequently came up trumps by kicking three of her four points inside the closing five minutes of the action. This included a nerveless effort from play with just 15 seconds remaining to earn Antrim the West County Hotel Cup on a final scoreline of 1-13 to 2-9.

“We knew it was going to be a big game coming into it, but especially in the second half, they really did push us to our limits. Don’t get me wrong, it probably did take me a wee bit too long to get into the game. The final 15 minutes, I feel like that’s when I started to get more comfortable on the ball and get the shots away,” O’Neill recalled.

“At the end of the day, it’s how everybody handled the pressure in the last couple of minutes. Especially when we went down. I was lucky enough to find myself on the end of the ball for that point, but I had Orlaith Prenter coming on the loop anyway. So if I wasn’t going to kick the point she was. I think it just worked out well for everybody.”

As well as collecting the silverware as All-Ireland junior winners, last month’s triumph over Carlow also means Antrim will be back in the intermediate grade next year for the first time since 2024.

While that campaign ended with the Saffrons suffering relegation from the second-tier of the All-Ireland championship, they had previously made a strong impression by reaching the semi-final stage of the Mary Quinn Memorial Cup in 2023.

O’Neill – who was also recently named alongside five of her team-mates on the TG4 Junior Team of the Championship – is confident Antrim are capable of making a similar impact in the TG4 All-Ireland intermediate series in 2027 and can also do likewise as one of the newly-promoted sides in Division 2 of the Lid National Football League.

“The first step was trying to get out of junior and it’s easier said than done. There’s serious competition within the junior. Our biggest goal going into next season is to just try our best to compete again, the way that we did back in 2023 when we played intermediate football.

“We are more than capable of playing at that level. From what I’ve gathered, everybody is coming back and everybody is buzzing to be playing intermediate football and Division Two league as well. Hopefully it’s as good a season as last, but everything goes up from here.”

Having previously come away with two defeats and a draw from three outings in the venue – all in All-Ireland junior finals – last month finally saw O’Neill tasting success with Antrim at Croke Park. She also lined out at the Jones’ Road ground in December of last year when St Ergnat’s, Moneyglass came up short to a five-in-a-row-clinching Kilkerrin-Clonberne in an AIB All-Ireland senior club football championship showpiece.

Despite losing out in this final to the Tribeswomen, reaching this stage was a remarkable achievement that complimented their successes in the Antrim and Ulster championships. Although it may prove difficult to match these feats in 2026, O’Neill and Moneyglass already have an Antrim senior championship semi-final to look forward to against Naomh Pól at New Loughbeg Road Site this Sunday.

“I feel like last season really showed what us as a team are capable of. I suppose it has set standards high. If we’re not performing, it’s like ‘We were doing this last year. What do we need to do to get back to what we were doing last year’,” O’Neill added.

“It’s one of those things. It is very much an open championship, but I feel like after the successful year last year, we need to keep our standards high. We know what we’re capable of and it’s just going out and performing on the day.”