Joule Park Aughrim set for new warm-up area

BRENDAN LAWRENCE at Ballinakill

TEAMS preparing for battle in Joule Park Aughrim may have a new area to warm up on if a plan to lease a patch of ground between the county grounds and the Aughrim Community Grounds comes to pass.

Avondale delegate Victor O’Shaughnessy raised the matter at the beginning of the County Board meeting on Monday night.

‘I’d just like to ask a question about the warm up area in Aughrim.

‘I see where you and someone else were to meet someone to do with the Community Grounds.

‘What’s the situation there at the moment?’ he asked.

‘We did meet him, and we have agreed in principal that we are going to use that, but we have to sit down with him and talk to Bridget Kenny and the CCC on how many times we need it for the year.

‘We hope to sit down again in the next few weeks,’ said Wicklow County Chairman Martin Fitzgerald.

‘Is that the community grounds, Mr Chairman?’ Asked O’Shaughnessy.

‘Correct. The community grounds, at the moment, have gotten an extra piece of ground and it joins the county grounds and we’d be using that.

‘Liam O’Loughlin would be more familiar with it. It’s called a floodplain, I think.

‘It’s a piece of ground that we leased from the County Council,’ said the Aughrim delegate.

‘We are hoping to go with it on a lease for one year and look for longer in the future.

‘The reason for it is, if you have matches in Joule Park Aughrim at 2pm and 4pm, every team wants at least three quarters of an hour to warm up.

‘There’s a lot of supporters sitting around waiting, the games will be getting underway quicker,’ explained Martin Fitzgerald.

‘It’s a great idea. The warm up area (the existing one in Joule Park Aughrim), a lot of planning went into that to see what could be done with it and I didn’t see it presented anywhere to anyone,’ said Victor O’Shaughnessy.

‘It was presented by management, we decided to look in to this,’ said Fitzgerald.

‘And not to us on the floor?’ Persisted O’Shaughnessy.

‘Management thought it was a bit expensive.

‘It’s not out the door yet, it could come back in the future.

‘We felt that the money wasn’t there at the moment and we felt there was other business as well,’