Work of Ray and fellow trustees ensured The Showgrounds was always a facility to be used by the community
left the club with money to not only to pay off the debt with money to help them going forward.
“However, fast forward to 1974, and the club again found itself in financial difficulty – which was much more serious than the previous occasions.
“They came back to me and Paddy to see what we could do. We decided that something could be done but that we would never again allow the ground to be up for grabs and be lost to the bank.
“So we took over the ground and we got an appeal to put it into a Trust for the Sligo community with very strong legal cautions in it. Namely, that it could never be used, mortgaged, sold or used for any purposes outside of football and community work.
“Even if the club went into liquidation, which we hope never happens, the ground could still be used by the community and be there for use when another league club in Sligo is set up. But hopefully, that won’t happen.
“I’ve actually retired as a trustee at the moment but where there was three of us (on the Trust), there are now six trustees there. All of which are top-class people whose main aim is to ensure that the ground is there for the club and the youth of Sligo.
“The club is very co-operative with that because they know that’s their future as well.”
Ray would go onto become vice-chairman of Sligo Rovers before serving in the top post as chairman from 1994 to 1999. He was the club’s long-standing representative on the FAI Council and was instrumental in installing an all-weather pitch at the Showgrounds as well as ensuring new stand facilities were built.
“The construction of the Treacy Avenue Stand by the Showgrounds Development Committee was a major undertaking, but it was made possible by the full cooperation we enjoyed from the residents of Treacy Avenue, the club’s members and supporters, and the Department of Sport and other state agencies. Without that committed support the project would not have been remotely feasible.
“Little did we realise at that time that the scale and cost of the general ground works required to meet Club Licensing requirements almost matched the cost of the new stand, but we had an excellent, ambitious Development Committee committee who delivered these works over a period of years.”
All of which was recognised by the County Council at last month’s awards ceremony.
“That was very nice,” says Ray of that evening. “I was delighted and glad to bring my wife out to the ceremony as she’s not been in the best of health lately but she really enjoyed the night.
“It’s been a complicated life so far and it’s still going on at the age of 86.”