Catriona Devine savours European Cross Country return for Finn Valley AC

Finn Valley AC senior women’s team bridge a 21-year gap this week when they return to the European stage.

Noeleen Scanlan, Nuala Bose, Teresa Doherty and Maggie O’Hara will don the blue and white singlets for the European Champions Clubs Cup (ECCC) Cross Country in Albufeira, Portugal as Finn Valley go to this stage for the first time since a team finished 12th in Mantua, Italy in 2005.

Club stalwart Catriona Devine has been appointed as the team leader for the trip and is no stranger to this race having competed each time previously the club qualified.

“It’s great to be part of it,” Devine says. “It’s absolutely great to get the Finn Valley team back into it again. It's a fantastic race and it's the best place to be.  

“It's a pinnacle of cross country running, you're up against the best in Europe really. The race itself is a fantastic race and a very high calibre race. It’s great to be back in Europe again and we can only progress from this.”

In their halcyon days of the 1990s and early 2000s, Finn Valley AC’s senior women competed nine times in the ECCC Cross Country. In 1995, at Maia in Portugal, Finn Valley AC finished sixth with Devine, then as Catriona McGranaghan, joined by Dawn Hargan, Kay Byrne, Ita Boyle, Belinda McArdle and Margaret Synott.

A year later, in Lanciano, Italy, Finn Valley were sixth again. This time, McGranaghan, Byrne and Boyle were back, accompanied by Jill Bruce and Rosaleen Campbell.

“An absolutely fantastic achievement for us,” Devine says now, 30 years on. “I finished 30th in two of the races and that was good. I was the youngest going as well at the start, I was only 20.

“It was really understated at that time; a small rural club like ourselves, going out there and the five or six of us were full-time at work. At that time, the majority that we were racing against over there, like the Portuguese and Spanish, were from them clubs who had full-time athletes. 

“To be up against them girls, like Albertina Dias was a brilliant Portuguese and she was fully sponsored at that time. When we look back, we kind of took it for granted too.”

Noeleen Scanlan, Nuala Bose, Teresa Doherty and Maggie O'Hara

Devine was part of a fabled Finn Valley senior women’s squad that won 10 National Senior Cross Country titles, including a staggering eight in a row. 

The Castlefin woman was also a part of the team that competed in Europe at Cassino (1994), Newport (1997), Istanbul (1998), Lanciano (1999), Salamanca (2000), Jaén (2003) and Mantua (2005).

“The leadership we had at that time, again we took it for granted with Patsy there as a leader,” Devine says. “There was nobody really like him, he was a fantastic leader. Going forward now, being team manager, team leader of this now, he's given me a lot of experience and a lot of good training.”

Finn Valley AC are shorn of Amy Greene - who led their charge as the second U23 at the National Seniors in Derry - this week due to a recent injury. The likes of Eilish Flanagan (injured), Roisin Flanagan and Leoni Cooke (unable to travel), Cara Laverty and Eimear McCarroll (in the US on scholarship) are also unavailable for this weekend.

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“It's all about building and about the experience going forward,” Devine said. “We have a very, very strong women's team now. We're leaving six good girls at home and we can only build on this.

“We're leaving those girls at home and the strength of those six girls we are going without shows the strength. The team is unreal at the minute and we can only build on that.

“It's very important for us to be in Europe and it's even more important for the younger generation coming through in the club to see us taking on this and moving forward.”

Devine has studied the form of recent years’ versions of these championships and feels as if a top 15 team placing would be “an outstanding performance”.

She says: “Top 12 would be even sweeter, but this is really a starting point for this team and we just need to build now and take it forward.”