CLUBS LAUNCH FIGHT FOR LAND
Too many left ‘fighting for scraps’ to play
CLUBS are ‘fighting for scraps of land’ to provide football for thousands of young people each week - with many forced to pay thousands of euro a year to rent pitches.
And the lack of playing facilities even led to a girls team being forced to disband, with a number of their players now fielding for Kentstown.
A public meeting in the Barbican on Monday heard how the council had plans for eight new pitches at Aston Village - which should have opened last year. Funding of €100,000 has been secured for them via sports grants.
But due to the issue being highlighted, it is now believed meetings between the ‘Pitches4Drogheda’ group and the council will now take place.
Schools were praised for allowing pitches to be used at weekends, otherwise clubs would fold.
THOUSANDS of soccer players of all ages are looking at a bleak future if new municipal pitches are not delivered on by Louth County Council.
The local authority has secured €100,000 in sports grants for a project close to Aston Village - up to eight pitches - but a deadline of 2016 to get them up and running has well passed.
Now clubs are paying hundreds of euro to even play one game, never mind thousands in rent each year.
A public meeting in the Barbican on Monday night heard details of how clubs are just surviving, having been neglected for years.
‘People in the council don’t understand. This is a community service we are providing, keeping young people off drugs, getting them to stay in on Fridays or Ssturdays before games’, one speaker stated.
Others revealed the ‘cap in hand’ policy they’ve had to adopt to keep pitches, knowing they could lose them at any stage.
Issues have also arisen where some clubs have sought to share pitches with others, but proving impossible due to the number of games being played on them.
For Robert Synnott from the Drogheda Schoolchildren’s League, the need for pitches is paramount.
They cater for 3,000 children, boys and girls, but many of the clubs don’t own their grounds and players are forced to change on the side of the road.
Their Emerging Talent Programme squads train each week on a hockey pitch.
‘Only for the schools in town and their generosity there would be no schoolchildren’s football’, he stated. ‘Clubs are fighting over scraps of land to play a game of football. The numbers involved are unreal.’
‘It’s time to put the pressure on TDs and councillors to get this situation sorted,’ Cllr Frank Godfrey, who facilitated Monday’s meeting, stated.