It was a dream come true for Knocknacarra teenager David Hernon over last weekend as he and his Shamrock Rovers teammates emerged victorious in the Irish Amputee National League.

David, who is a student at St Joseph’s College (the Bish), was part of the team that overcame Cork City in a 1-0 win to take the crown on Saturday last at the Oscar Traynor Centre in Coolock.

Speaking to the Connacht Tribune this week, David says he’s delighted with the win in a game that he’s hugely passionate about.

“If you’d told me when I lost my leg that someday, I would have been winning a League title, I wouldn’t have believed it,” says the Leaving Cert student.

“Being an amputee, obviously it was hard to get into football, or to get into any sport in general,” continues David, who had his leg amputated when he was six years old.

But he and his family came across the Irish Amputee Football Association when he was around ten years old – and he’s been hooked ever since.

“I remember when we saw it first and we went to Dublin for a training day. I just loved it,” he says.

Explaining how the game works, David says there are three amputee teams in the country – Shamrock Rovers, Bohemians and Cork City.

“When you’re 16 years old, you get assigned a club and I got put with Shamrock Rovers,” he says.

That means travelling to Dublin for training, which is a big commitment, but David says he’s managing at the minute with attending the national team’s training sessions once a month on a Saturday.

He says he has huge support from friends and family – his dad was on the sideline last Saturday – and playing in front of them at a World Cup is the next dream, something he sounds determined to make happen.

“I put a lot into it but at the end of the day, representing Ireland in a World Cup would make it all worthwhile,” he says.

He and Rovers have qualified for the Champions League, too, and that’s the next challenge on the horizon, sometime in 2025.

“That’s a whole new level of playing and we’ll be up against different countries where we have no idea what the standard of play is. It’ll be a massive challenge but that’s good,” he says.

Pictured: Shamrock Rovers’ Galwegian David Hernon with the National League trophy.