St Mary’s set sights on new astro pitch

ST MARYS’ Saggart have submitted a planning application for a redevelopment on their astro pitch which would see a new all weather pitch be developed.

This would involve converting the pitch that they are using at the moment into a 3g artificial grass pitch.

Currently the pitch that is played on in Saggart is not level so the plan would be to relevel the pitch, put drainage in and use an all weather surface which would then be available for use by all members in the club, particularly the juveniles, many of whom have to play in Rathcoole for the moment “at the mercy of the South Dublin County Council”.

We spoke to chairman Jimmy Callaghan who informed us of the club’s ambition to renovate the pitch for some time now.

“I’ve taken over as chairman this year but Conor Lehane, who was chairman for the last three years, very much focused on this during his tenure. He worked on this and came up with a plan and he developed a developing committee.

‘It’s been a while in the making. We’ve been trying to get other playing facilities for a while around the area and still are.”

“The juvenile numbers in the club are huge. We’ve over 500 kids with two teams in every age group from under 8s to under 14s so it’s a case of we have to get more playing facilities and have places for them to play matches.”

Callaghan spoke further on the need for redevelopment pointing to the amount of new juvenile members joining each year.

“In the last 2 years would you believe that there are more young girls joining St Marys’ than young boys. There’s between 40 and 50 girls per year in the younger ages, we just have to get facilities to be able to cater for these numbers.”

The redevelopment will not be cheap however and if the project is given the green light the expected cost is estimated to be around the €1,200,000 mark. Callaghan spoke about how the project was going to be paid for, touching on grants received and a system the club is setting up called the “500 Club”.

“We have quite an amount of money in grants that we have been able to ascertain over the last year or so.

‘Then there’s obviously a certain amount that we will have to raise through fundraising.

‘We’ve started our 500 club where we’re trying to get 500 members to donate a thousand euros to the fund and we also then have the commercial end of it where we are going after the local businesses in the area.

‘That’s up and running at the moment and that’s how we feel we make up the shortfall in funds for the project.”

“You’re asking parents to buy in for their kids and all of their futures.”

Callaghan hopes that the 500 Club will be successful due to the deep community roots embedded in the club with many members having family ties stretching back generations.

“That’s what we are targeting. We understand that a lot of people won’t have €1000 euros just there and then.

‘There’s a number of ways of paying for this, you can do two €500 or ten monthly €100 payments or you can even do it over 2 years. We’re flexible on it, the thing to do is to try and get the funding in so we can get this up and running.”