Glamour galore at the WDFL awards
ON Friday night the Wicklow football league hosted the Tommy Earls Wicklow and District League Awards at the Parkview Hotel, Newtown to honour some of the players, managers and club members that have been successful throughout the season.
Newtown United’s Dean Odlum took home the prestigious Wicklow League Player of the Year award while his joint managers, Trevor O’Brien and Gary Kelly, won the Wicklow League Manager of the Year award.
Unsurprisingly champions Wicklow Town AFC won the Premier 1 awards with Gareth Murphy winning Player of the Year while managers Eamonn Delaney and Anthony Byrne won the Premier Manager of the Year award.
Likewise Wicklow Town AFC won the john Tobin Youth League and the awards on the night. Oisín O’Reilly was the Youth Player of the Year and Ian Cuddihy won the managerial prize.
Mick O’Rourke is the Pat O’Toole Division 2 Player of the Year and Rathnew’s Finbarr Franey and John Hubbard are the joint Mangers of the Year. Robbie Eyre is the Division 3 Player of the Year and Dawaine Cooper and James Doyle are the Managers of the Year for Division 3.
The ceremony was also a chance for the League to pay tribute to people for their off field actions. The 1979 Rathnew Celtic team was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement award for their victory in the Leinster Junior Cup that year.
Former Manchester United player and Bray native Noel McFarlane has been inducted into the Hall of Fame. McFarlane was a member of the Busby Babes, the famed United team of the 1950s.
Ireland international footballer Aine O’Gorman is the Sports Person of the Year. Also a Bray native, O’Gorman has played 78 times for her country since 2006 and has scored 7 goals. She captained her country once in 2015 in a friendly against the United States.
Numerous other awards were given on the night: Paddy Byrne of Glencormac United, Paul Lee of Newtown United, Neil Garnett of Arklow United and Emmet Costello of Ballywaltrim FC received Fair play awards from the League. Seamus O’Toole and Ray Byrne won a Services to Soccer award while Mick Farrell of Avonmore FC is Club Person of the Year. Paul O’Brien got a League Achievement award and Carl Doyle is Referee of the Year.
Speaking about the awards ceremony the District League’s Jim McLaughlin was happy with how it was attended given it was in August rather than the usual date of June. The poor weather over Christmas played havoc with the fixture list and took about two months out of the usual season.
“We were out of commission for nearly a couple of months, we were only get a few matches played and some of the clubs were hiring out all weather pitches, some outside of the county, to try and get matches played. It was quite difficult to get the season finished. When the weather dried up then we got the season finished.
“I couldn’t put a figure on [the amount of games not played] but some of the matches weren’t finished. But that’s par for the course. Normally every season coming towards the end of the season the also-rans all drop out, that’s a common occurrence in all leagues. Our season would normally finish at the end of May but this year we finished around mid-June.
“We’ve two matches outstanding due to an appeal situation. We’ve one cup final to play that we’ll play before the season starts and we have a second placed match to play in Division 3.”
Looking forward to next season McLaughlin hopes there won’t be as much rain and it will kick off on the weekend of September 10th. There’ll be the Premier1, Division 2 and Division 3 and the Youth League.
Many of the top teams in the county like Newtown, Rathnew and Wicklow Town have a number of GAA players in their squad but it doesn’t seem to affect Wicklow League too much.
“It might affect the teams themselves but it doesn’t affect us as a league. Most of these teams have a lot of players registered and they can work around it. It all depends on if the GAA clubs are going well or not.”