MAKING A STAND

BALLYEA – A BETTER PLACE TO WATCH AND PLAY OUR GAME

CROKE PARK on St Patrick’s Day may be foremost in all our sights and dreams these days but Ballyea Hurling Club is firmly keeping a view towards another special field – our own.

A new stand, over by the home side of the club field, will be built over the coming weeks while the club has also applied for a grant from the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport to redevelop the main pitch.

And with another keen eye to the future, the club will also be making improvements to the back pitch to help our juvenile teams train and play this coming season.

The construction of the stand will start over the next few days and should be completed within a few weeks at a bargain price –approximately €15,000 when such a project normally costs three times that – thanks to the generosity of local people and businesses.

And every family and business in the community has a chance to contribute to the funding of the stand – and have that contribution remembered forever more.

For €100 you can have your family name ingrained in a brick-sized plaque of marble that will form a wall at the back of the stand. (The club newsletter which is circulating around the parish this week includes an attached plaque order form which you can send on to club treasurer Sean Kirby or you can ask Sean directly for an order form. You can get Sean at kirbyseanag@gmail.com or 086-8109662.)

And for €300 or more, you can also contribute with a sponsorship sign on the exterior of the stand, the cost dependent on the size and location of your sign. If you have any interest and queries regarding this, contact either Sean Kirby, Finance committee chairman John Gavin (086-1851234), Fiona Whelan (086-1000787) or Louise McMahon (087-6892178).

An electronic scoreboard, sponsored by club chairperson Pat Moylan and John and Eileen Slattery of the Local Inn, will be erected in the coming months too, down by the far-right corner of the pitch as you stand from the club car park.

It is also proposed to install two team dugouts as part of this project.

But not only will the pitch be a better place to watch a game, the club are seeing to it that it’ll be a better place to play.

Last week the club submitted an application to Minister Shane Ross’s government department for a grant to drain and resurface the main pitch, to supplement funds raised in recent months with the success of our senior team.

Although the pitch has been regularly treated in recent years, the executive of the club, having consulted with the Ennis-based agronomist James Healy, have decided that it needs to undergo extensive work so that in the long term we’ll have a superior and more sustainable playing surface.

In the shorter term the club will also be making adjustments to the back field, by providing proper goals and ball-stopping netting for the juvenile hurling and camogie teams in the parish.