Exciting times for Kilnamanagh after club receives FAI Club Mark
By Hayden Moore
EXCITEMENT is in the air around Kilnamanagh AFC with the club having recently received the FAI Club Mark for implementing best practice in the governance, management and administration of the club.
“It’s great for the club” Conor Kenna, Director of Football at Kilnamanagh AFC, told The Echo. “There’s been a lot of hard work in the background from the committee and volunteers to get to this stage and it’s a recognition of that.”
Johnny Mackin Kilnamanagh AFC Chairman and Robbie DeCourcy FAI Sth Dublin Dev Officer
“It’s something the FAI introduced to ensure all coaches are fully Garda vetted and ensure full compliance of all mentors who are working with children.
“This is letting people outside the club know that all the coaches have been vetted and that the club are going by best practice.
“It used to be back in the day that a parent could turn up and take the session, that’s gone now, but it was needed.
“If you want to progress football in this country and in communities, it was needed and it’s an important step for the FAI.”
It has been a very busy year for the club so far, with them announcing that they had lodged plans for the construction of a two-storey clubhouse at Ned Kelly Park, at a cost of approximately €500k.
Going from strength to strength, participation numbers have exploded within the football club to now having over 500 members which include 70 fully vetted coaches, 24 teams and a booming academy.
The news that Kilnamanagh would be running a summer camp this year was met with a wave of support, and it was subsequently booked out in under an hour.
It is through the likes of the FAI Club Mark that the club is becoming a force in underage football and Kilnamanagh AFC are fully focused on building a better future.
“We’ve got our FAI Club Mark now, so the next step for us is to go for the Star Mark,” Kenna told The Echo.
“That’s all around the player development plan, so that opens in September.
“We’ve applied to build our clubhouse as well, so hopefully that Star Mark will coincide with that and we can keep progressing.”
After receiving the Club Mark, the One Star Award is the next step and that is awarded to clubs to implement policies and procedures to become an official FAI Player Development Centre.
