It has been some time since any Ulster player has had such an immediate impact on the inter-county camogie scene as Éobha McAllister.
The Dunloy teenager scored on her debut as a second half substitute in the opening Division 1A Centra League game against Tipperary and contributed handsomely in every other game of Antrim’s season that delivered a first win over Cork in 70 years, a third successive Ulster title and then the Glen Dimplex All-Ireland intermediate crown in August.
Just 11 days after the Croke Park showdown with Laois when she scored five points, Antrim’s new kid on the block registered a last quarter hat-trick as well as six earlier points to take Dunloy from two points down at the break against visitors Ballycastle to a comfortable win in the opening round of the IN2 Engineering Antrim senior championship.
After the round robin group stages of the club title-race, McAllister is well ahead of the chasing pack in the race to become the Creative Designs championship top-scorer.
This is semi-finals weekend and Dunloy will again face Ballycastle while Loughgiel, chasing a 13th successive crown, take on Cushendall.
Everyone is talking about the youngster who this week, was named as one of three nominees for the PwC Camogie All-Ireland intermediate player of the year award. Her inclusion in the Soaring Stars team was a given.
And yet she started 2026 with her Cross & Passion Ballycastle school team preparing to halt St Patrick’s Maghera’s four in a row bid.
“Maghera had hammered us by 16 or 17 points in the group stages, they were hammering everyone with scores like that. At half-time in the final we were eight points down,” recalls McAllister, playing at midfield in that final.
“I wasn’t doing all that well. I had missed a few frees.”
But the team captain hit 4-2 in the second half to eke out a shock 6-6 to 2-17 victory that was orchestrated by the management team of Barry Kelly (father of Antrim teammate Maeve Kelly) and Antrim manager Elaine Dowds, who doubled as her Applied Science teacher.
“We talked at half-time about tagging on a few points to get us going. I got two or three from frees and then got this free not too far out. I saw there were just two players on the Maghera line. So, I went for the goal and got it. That brought us back into the game and everyone just fought so hard from then until the end.
“We played Ursulines from Thurles in the All-Ireland semi-final in Cushendun a couple of weeks later. They had Caoimhe Stakelum and she was basically the difference between the teams. They won.”
However, just a week later, Stakelum was back with her Tipperary senior teammates to play Antrim in the first round of the national league and McAllister found herself on the Saffron bench.
“Dowdsie wanted me to play county. She told me that I was good enough to play senior. When you hear that, it gives you a huge boost. I hadn’t been training much with the county team because of the school training and games. I never expected to get game time right away. But I was told to warm up at half-time and then I came on. If you come on as a sub, the next thing you want is to get a starting jersey.
“Our next game was in Cork and we won it. I could feel what it meant to the team. It gave us all so much confidence. We knew coming home that day that we were good enough to play at that level and we just took it from there for the rest of year.”
The youngster still can’t believe the atmosphere in the Antrim changing room from the start of the season.
“Look, it really felt like a club team, it’s a great atmosphere. It was the most welcoming thing coming into that changing room. If someone had told me a year ago I would be such friends with girls from other clubs, some of them 10 or 12 years older than me, I just wouldn’t have believed it.
“My mum (née Oonagh Elliott) played with Dowdsie on the first Antrim teams to win the All-Ireland intermediate title and she would have brought that up now and again in conversation. Seriously though, mum has taken me right through the age groups here in the club and she is even involved now with the seniors. She just drives me and (sister) Adria on to be a better player.”
2026 Glen Dimplex All-Ireland Intermediate Camogie Championship Semi-Final, Kingspan Breffni Park, Cavan 18/7/2026
Antrim vs Meath
Antrim’s Eobha McAllister is presented with the player of the match award
Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/Nick Elliott
McAllister was a key part of the Saffron U23 team that captured the All-Ireland title despite losing the opening two games in the group stages. The Dunloy ace hit 1-4 in the final against Wexford for clubmate, Katie Molloy to raise the cup in Drogheda.
She fired home a goal and two points in the Ulster senior final and then emerged top scorer from play in the All-Ireland intermediate series, contributing 2-2 in the semi-final win over Meath and five points on her Croke Park debut.
“I don’t know. I am one of those people that just never feels nervous. I just go out wanting to get my first touch and my first score. I got that after less than a minute in Croke Park. Once I got the point I was settled down rightly.”
Four days after the All-Ireland, she collected her A Level results and just last week began her degree course in Sports and Exercise at the University of Ulster. Not surprisingly, McAllister is part of the university’s Talented Athlete Scheme.
“I’m just getting to know Belfast at the minute. I haven’t found out much about the camogie team yet. That will come soon, I expect. Like the rest of the Dunloy team, I am totally focused on the club championship.
“After the All-Ireland, I was buzzing to get back playing with the club because I hadn’t really played with them this year and that was strange. We came close to beating Loughgiel in last year’s final (4-11 to 1-17) and have lost four of the last five finals to them. We feel we are getting closer every year. We won a game each against each other in the league this year and then last month, Dunloy came from behind to beat them in the championship.”
McAllister hit 1-9 in that game as Dunloy won by 3-17 to 2-12 after trailing 2-5 to 0-9 at half-time. However, in the last round of games a fortnight ago, Cushendall held Dunloy to a low-scoring draw, 0-10 to 1-7, with McAllister scoring the equaliser from a 50m free.
“We had won the other games easily. So it was a good warning to get, ahead of the semi-finals. My underage teams would have had some battles with Cushendall. We took a few hammerings alright but could spring a championship shock now and again.
“This weekend we won’t be taking anything for granted against Ballycastle, even though we beat them in the first group game. I know them, played with them when I was playing up in school teams – the McIntosh girls and Shannagh Heggarty who were on the Antrim team this year – and of course Maeve Kelly.”
Are there more medals, more titles to lift for a young star who started 2026 with a scoring masterclass in a provincial schools’ final and hasn’t stopped finding the posts since?
Given her annus mirabilis, you wouldn’t rule it out.
