Liberty Insurance Squad Goals Semi Finals 2017
On Friday, July 21st, Gailltír and Galway Shamrocks qualified for the Liberty Insurance Squad Goals final after an exciting day of semi-final competition at Nowlan Park.
Four teams from across the country took to the playing field in Kilkenny for the semi-finals of the Liberty Insurance Squad Goals competition, with music entertainment, spot prizes and lots of fun throughout. Also in attendance were our 2 media partners, 2FM radio presenter Eoghan McDermott and Her.ie and Sportsjoe.ie. Buoyed by the excitement of the event, the chance of winning €8,000 for their club, to be in an upcoming TV ad and the opportunity to meet Camogie legend Mags D’Arcy, the players performed brilliantly across the three challenges, which saw some quality camogie on display.
After receiving a record 52 entries for this year’s competition, the judges had a tough time plucking the ten teams to go forward to the public vote on Her.ie. Once decided, each of those entries received massive support from family, friends and club mates - with over 36,000 votes cast. At the close of the voting, the four teams that came out on top were Gailltír, Shamrocks Camogie, Thomastown and Ballygarvan. These teams were those chosen to go forward to the semi-finals of the competition which took place last Friday.
The competition saw the four teams complete three challenges
1) Squad Skills
2) Squad Strength
3) Squad Goals
Squad Skills challenged players on their skills with the sliotar and hurl, and asked them to show off their freestyle skills over the course of 60 seconds.
Squad Strength saw players from different teams compete against each other to hit the sliotar the farthest down the field. Individual scores were then totalled for the best combined team score. Gailltír came out on top for both of these challenges but were pushed hard by Shamrocks.
Squad Goals, the final challenge, was one of accuracy. Here the players were asked to work together as a team to hit targets on the custom-made target sheet across the goals in Nowlan park. Shamrocks got their reward for their efforts on the day and took home the win in the last challenge of the day.
The judges for the event were Mags D’Arcy, Liberty Insurance Ambassador; Sean Brett, Head of Brand & Acquisition for Liberty Insurance and; Mary O’Toole, Commercial Manager of The Camogie Association. Speaking about the competition on the day, Mags said that she enjoyed the skills on show but she was particularly excited about the teamwork aspect of the challenges and enjoyed seeing how teams “cohesively worked together” to get the win.
The Squad Goals Final takes place during half time of the Senior Camogie final in Croke Park on September 10th and will see Gailltír and Shamrocks Camogie battle it out for the €8,000 prize.