Lucan United to join FAI National League

LUCAN United are another local side who have found themselves part of the upcoming National League third tier that was announced just before Christmas.

The side currently ply their trade in the Leinster Senior League where they were actually champions in the 2024 season.

John Doyle managed the side for 20 years and is still heavily involved with the club. He spoke on the need for the national league and how Lucan will approach this new chapter.

“Before tier 3 came along we had already looked at the criteria for the first division league of Ireland, what are we going to need if we decide to go down that road so the idea has been there for a while, in the background. So when the third tier came along it was a bit of a no brainer to be honest, it was perfect for us.”

The club is still hoping to also continue in the Leinster Senior League.

We will have players in the Leinster Senior Team who want to move forward to the third tier but we also have players who already have had a professional career and want to continue playing at the top level of the LSL.

They have had their time and are happy to play at the top level of LSL football. Again it’s hard to say, we don’t know how much strain this is going to put on us but right now we would be planning to keep both.”

There are plenty of unknowns heading into this new third tier with Doyle touching on the nature of partaking in a new competition for the first time.

“This is the unknown bit, we don’t know right now what level of players are going to be in, will players move from the first division, will they move up from LSL and the other leagues. We don’t know that yet, the announcement was made and we had hundreds of emails from players straight away.

‘There’s huge interest. You’ve got current league of Ireland players, you have young players, you’ve got current LSL players.”

“There’s definitely a gap for this. It’s a huge step up to the Premier Division and there’s room for this, for players developing and moving up. It’s going to be a different type of competition for them, it’ll be different for everybody.”

Under Doyle, Lucan made their way up the divisions before winning the Leinster Senior Crown in 2024, the goal now for the club is of course to continue performances on the pitch but to also grow the club on the sideline.

“The big thing for us is to try grow the number of people going to the matches.

‘To get the community involved and to try get the community to come to the games.

‘Get them out of their houses and support their local club.

‘There’s a lot of people in Lucan probably travelling over to Rovers on a Friday night, hopefully they will also try go to our games whatever day they might be. We can try build a bit of support that way.”