GAA World - Down - Castlewellan GAC

St Malachy’s take AIB club honours
By Paddy Heaney + Ruairí ONeill

MEMBERS of the St Malachy’s, Castlewellan club in Down ignored last night’s snowy conditions to celebrate the news that they had been crowned the AIB’s Club of the Year.

Club chairman John McCartan and secretary Ciaran Crilly were in Croke Park yesterday when the awards were announced, and they picked up a cheque for 17,000 euro.

“We were totally gobsmacked when we got the word today,” revealed Ciaran Crilly.

“We didn’t know when we went up there. We just knew that we had won the County Down award.

“Then it was announced that we won the provincial. Then it emerged that we had won the All-Ireland and we were totally over the moon. We weren’t prepared for it all.”

The judges explained why St Malachy’s had been selected from the 32 clubs.

“One of the other things was our Irish News website,” said Crilly. “They were very impressed by the fact that it was updated every day. Another thing was our juvenile coaching policy. We have a total of 18 teams from juvenile, right through to senior and that includes hurling and ladies football.

“We also have a huge fund-raising programme to develop two new pitches at Castlewellan. One will be a training pitch with floodlights. The other will be a full size playing pitch with the same dimensions as Croke Park.”

Crilly was keen to stress that the prize should be seen as a reflection on the work conducted by everyone involved with the club.

“We’d like to emphasise that we consider this a united effort. There are so many people involved, from trainers at juvenile level to people who organise things in the social club.

“One of the big reasons we won was due to the fact that we have total involvement in our community from juveniles to old age pensioners.”

Down footballer, and the club’s football captain, Gregory McCartan described the award as a “great honour”.

“It is a tremendous thing to have. The amount of work that the club members put in is unbelievable.

“There are people like Pat Rice, who has two or three All-Ireland medals, and he’s there doing groundsman.

“There is a great tradition in the club which is strange for a town club. Usually it’s only rural clubs where you get people working so closely together.”

Commenting on the club’s ambitious plans to build two new training pitches, McCartan said: “The committee is unbelievable.

“They are striving to develop something like Owenbeg (Co Derry’s floodlit training complex).

“I think the chairman, John McCartan believes that in order to get people in the area involved in the club and concentrating on the GAA, then you have to become a superclub – like Bellaghy, Ballinderry, Nemo Rangers or Kilmacud Crokes.

“We have great links with Kilmacud and that is the type of club we are striving to become like.”

McCartan quipped that all that remains for the club to do now is “get a wee bit of success on the field”.

“Hopefully this year if we can avoid Mayobridge we could get to the final,” he said.

St Malachy’s fended off competition from the three other provincial winners – Simonstown Gaels (Meath), St Brigid’s (Roscommon) and Burgess (Tipperary). All four provincial winners received cheques for 5,000 euro.

Due to the success of the scheme over the past two years, AIB has trebled its initial investment to over E100,000. In addition to the development awards, every club that entered the competition was entered into a draw to win a complete club kit worth 6,000 euro. This prize was won by O’Loughlin Gaels from Kilkenny.