Momentum must be maintained – McLoughlin

COLM McLoughlin is the secretary of St Brendan’s Park and he has been involved in different capacities for the best of three decades.

Living only a stone’s throw from their original pitch he was chairman of the club for eight years and took up his present position two years ago.

He played for the team for the best part of two decades and he is very pleased with the way the club has been progressing over the years from a players and facilities point of view.

“We have some great volunteers involved in the club and they are all totally dedicated to their jobs. We will be celebrating our 50th anniversary next year and we plan to have big festivities to mark the occasion. We are very fortunate to have a very big volume of players available to us at senior and underage level. Through our schoolboys/girls and Academy we have over 230 children coming in the gates of Christy Leahy Park every weekend and we have a big team of coaches looking after their welfare.

“At present we have 36 coaches working at Christy Leahy Park. Every age group is catered for and it is great to see the number of girls increasing every year. We also have a strong team looking after the facilities and keeping them up to scratch. A lot of painstaking work went into financing everything and it took a big team effort to bring it to fruition. The Sports Capital Grands in recent years were also a big help.

“We were fortunate to have born leaders involved in the club who had the foresight to look into the future and come up with a dream plan. Our aim is to provide the best of facilities and coaching for everyone that chooses to play for the club and give them every opportunity to strive for higher goals such as playing league of Ireland or getting trials with cross channel clubs.”

“Looking ahead we will be hoping to try and provide a full size astro-turf pitch. The one we have at present is too small to cater for the demand and we will be hoping we will be able to finance sometime soon. We had some great servants of the club over the years with people like, Christy Leahy, the late John Joe Naughton and John O’Flynn, Tadgh Healy, John Hoare, Tim Leahy and Chris Nugent.

Colm is a big Crystal Palace supporter and says two of his stand out memories were reaching the U-16 National final back in 2014 and hosting matches in the Victory Shield international Under-16 tournament which was staged in Tralee two years ago.

“We are a big club with big membership and looking into the future we will do the very best for our players with the hope of lifting silverware along the journey.

“Many of our players have gone on to play cross channel while we are also very well represented in the SSE Airtricity U-13, U-15 U-17 and U-19 teams. The most important thing is to look after players and give them the opportunity to play the game at the highest level possible. We are in a strong position going forward but we must keep the momentum going.”