Esker Celtic players and coaches pictured as the club continues to go from strength to strength both on and off the pitch
Esker making waves on three fronts
ESKER Celtic are seeing huge success in their adult section at the minute with the club currently fielding three senior sides for the first time.
Last season they had just one side, who currently play in the Division 3A Saturday having been promoted.
They are doing extremely well at the minute, first in their division after six games played, tied with Tallaght Town on 13 points.
Due to this team’s success and an increased aim at recruiting past players, the club has managed to field two other teams in competition with one playing the Division 3C Saturday League and another in the Division 3A Sunday division.
The 3C Saturday side are also top of their league with seven wins from seven games while the Sunday team side are impressing as well, sitting in first place joint on points with Iveagh Celtic.
Gavin Butler of Esker Celtic spoke on the huge development of the adult section within the club.
“We got a lot of interest because the current 3A Saturday side did so well last year. A lot of older lads who used to play in our U18’s and others so we ended up with 60 Senior players over the summer which led us to creating two other new squads.”
“We had only one senior team before and we now have tripled that over one summer.
‘There’s two reasons. The new Sunday side was always in the pipeline.
‘Once you get up to U18s we didn’t have a great pathway into the Senior team so it’s something that we’ve been looking it.
‘We had a great underage team a couple of years ago that made it to U18s but we didn’t have a great pathway for them to go forward.”
“That Sunday team is really young for Leinster Senior standards, they are all only 20 or 21, literally just the U18s that we had two or three years ago that had to finish in football because there was nowhere to go.
‘Their old manager put out the feelers to see how many of the old band could get back together and managed to make a squad.”
The new Saturday side is also made up of past players of the club, though an older age average, also inspired by the success and momentum that is within Esker Celtic at the minute they are lacing up their boots and lining out for the club once again.
While the Senior section of the club has seen tremendous growth in the last few months or so, Esker primarily value themselves on their academy and young talent.
The establishment of a girls academy as well as two teams at U9 and U11 for girls has been a massive indicator of progress for the club who now possess nearly 540 registered players with the vast majority of these being schoolboys and schoolgirls.
