Stepping up to the mark in Moyross
The Thomond Park floodlights illuminate the evening sky like fireworks, the arching stands rising tall and proud like a palace. It’s little more than a solid boot from Moyross but for most here, it’s a world they’ll never get to be a part of.
A theatre of dreams, but only for those who still have the ability to dream. And while Keith Earls may have made the short yet remarkable journey to prominence, he’s the exception. The rule says that most here have never managed to escape an estate where unemployment once hit 84%.
I’m sitting in a car with Jude Meaney, chairman of Moyross United soccer club, touring what has long been described as one of Ireland’s most disadvantaged and notorious areas.
We pass Earls’ childhood house, we pass the infamous Pineview section of the sprawling neighbourhood, we pass a specially erected garden linking two houses drowned by tragedy. On the left was once the residence of Frank Ryan, shot twice in the head in September 2006. On the right was once the house of Darren Bennett, stabbed in the stomach in March 2009.
“The friars built that garden,” sighs Meaney. “I hope it brings some small bit of comfort and peace into the lives of those poor families left behind.”
Sadly, there’s more. Meaney tells the horrific story of the mistakenly murdered Shane Geoghegan and how his father lived only a stone’s throw from the intended target, of how for a long time gangs offered children rides on horses in exchange for delivering drugs, of how the all-too-well-known feud in these parts began with nothing more than a school row between a couple of 15-year-old girls.
“Here, parents believe kids, sides are taken and neighbours fall out. The temperament people have is different. On top of that there’s the ADHD aspect. Some people say it’s an excuse but if you drive through a middle or upper-class area you will not see kids all over the streets at night. Look around, here you do see it.”
It’s against this background our tale is set, but this is not a bad news story, or an old news story. Things are still unrecognisable from the lives of those not ostracised, but it’s in the darkness that light shines brightest. And around here, there are plenty trying to change the lives of locals and the reputation of this crumbling part of the city.
“Ten years ago, some things were sensationalised that shouldn’t have been, and some things that weren’t should have been,” says Eddie O’Shaughnessy, long-standing coordinator of the local Garda youth diversion project and a member of Moyross United’s committee. “Then the reality was that people were in fear of their lives. Outside the primary school was so dangerous. You wouldn’t have been here. But it’s changing.”
And inside the primary school, they are staying positive. Indeed, what would be considered only baby steps by most communities are massive strides, because any momentum is as rare as it is cherished. “Over the last few years, through sport in particular, children are beginning to engage,” enthuses principal Tiernan O’Neill. “That’s making a big difference. Sport is an intrinsic part of behaviour management, self esteem, how kids self-regulate themselves, how they control their emotions. It’s phenomenal what you can achieve, even in numeracy and literacy, through the carrot of sport. It’s an area that’s changing and the success of Moyross United encapsulates that. Everything that club has done epitomises what a new Moyross is about.”
That soccer club is why we are here, and our tour reaches the home of the most unimaginable of success stories.
We get out of the car and squint into the darkness, through a steel fence that surrounds two basic pitches, but a bunch of young kids throwing small stones at each other and an older group peering out from their hoodies briefly grab attention. However it’s too easy to judge and another club member Rayme O’Halloran, whose engineering company has long been a sole employer in this black spot, hands over a sheet of paper and says it’s something he’s been working on to help people see beyond preconception.
It reads: The phenomenon of the hoodie is very symbolic — when we withdraw from the world, we don’t just do this emotionally and spiritually but also physically. The hood covers our face where we don’t want to meet the world. The hope is that we are confident enough to meet the world barefaced. If we can provide something, anything, to draw kids out and entice them back into engaging with the world, then we need to use those opportunities and put our resources where they are needed.
O’Halloran and the 24 others on the recently-formed committee of Moyross United are maximising those opportunities. But with very few resources. According to chairman Meaney, the two pitches don’t even belong to the club and having reached the out-of-town stages of the FAI Junior Cup for the first time they were, for a while, in danger of losing a home tie because they don’t have proper changing rooms or showers. Instead they have two metal sheds that you’d barely fit a starting 11 into, and the one on the left has a sign warning of high voltage on the door, Meaney too hands over a piece of paper, this time a cutting from the Limerick Post. It’s about a grant of €350,000 given to another junior club in the city. “Fair play to them,” he says. “But Moyross is the place everyone hears about and we got just €3,000 towards jerseys. They spend €30,000 on a handball alley that no one uses. On top of that they are reducing the number of houses here in Moyross to bring down the population. There’s a figure of €30,000 to demolish one house. It revolts me. I hate money being wasted.”
“Lately when I asked the question about funding, I was told the club didn’t apply,” adds O’Halloran. “Now that’s a lame excuse. People can come in and manage everything else in what I believe is a social engineering project, to displace people and bring the housing stock down so there is 600 instead of 1,100. They manage actual lives but they can’t manage this part of it? Soccer is the language a teenager and a kid understands. You’d think in the middle of a regeneration project, in an area like this, the first thing they’d do is look after that but the club don’t have anything of their own.”
There are plenty of examples of soccer changing a community that they have at the ready, firing them off like arrows from a bow. O’Halloran went to Glasgow recently and was brought to The Gorbals, where as he puts it, “our gangs are nothing compared to what they have”. In the midst of five feuding estates they opened a 24-hour floodlit pitch with no security and every night the gangs congregate but don’t fight. “They play football, a phenomenon I witnessed myself.” Meaney then mentions a project he studied in Lanarkshire where 1,000 youths played on Saturday nights and police noted that crime was way down. It could happen in Moyross with a little more money but if United have gotten crumbs before budget week, they can only look forward to a bare plate. Yet still this club wades forward on an empty stomach.
Just four years ago at a committee meeting, and with the club languishing in the bottom division of Limerick soccer, three people showed up. One of the few remaining outlets for teenagers was set to disappear. Yet four promotions in a row and the club founded in 1975 are top of the third flight. To put that into context, when their manager Paul Power returned to take over his local team in 2007, they had one ball and 13 players. Now they have over 100 turning out for four different sides and although the youngest of those squads is U16, he believes with a little help in the form of finance, in a couple of years they could have 300 players and be fielding teams right down to under-10 level.
“Right now though, we don’t have the facilities to accommodate that,” says Power. “It’s frustrating because growing up here, it was so bad and there was nothing. Not one amenity for 30 years. There were young fellas just messing around, taking cars, breaking windows, because there was nothing to do. But for me it wasn’t hard to stay away from that for the very simple reason I was involved in sport, my father was my trainer and I was a successful boxer. I know sport is an unbelievable outlet because it gets bodies and minds right. It’s like psychology and I can tell if there is something wrong with guys on our team. One could be having trouble with the wife and another having money problems because unemployment around here is unreal. If so I’ll have a word.
“So the club helps them but it helps others too. If I see guys causing trouble I’ll try and get them to join. There was a guy down the road from me who was always in trouble, and that same fella got a Player of the Month recently. His attitude has changed, it gave him confidence. Also, it’s unbelievable, the money to keep someone in jail, €70,000 a year at least. We’ve already kept two or three young lads out of jail, I know that for a fact. There were another two in jail for stupid things — drunk and disorderly, joyriding, assault — but they came out, joined and one told me how he loves it, he doesn’t care if he gets his game, it’s changed him. So give us just a few quid and we can do so much more. Spending now could save the Government a fortune.”
Not to mention save so many youths from the scrapheap. After all, just 10 years ago people only came here for drugs but now three players from outside the area come for training. And as Power recalls, when he was growing up, people who were lucky enough to have a relative in another area would put down their address when applying for work because Moyross assured you of not getting the job. Now there is a semblance of pride in that tarnished name, all thanks to this small team.”
“To be associated with here was terrible,” says O’Halloran. “You were stigmatised. Not alone are you in the biggest cul-de-sac in Europe but it’s a cul-de-sac of the mind. That hill over there is the city dump. For years the smell was blowing in over this place. There is no work in an area the size of Nenagh and people are surprised there was anarchy. People outside look down on here. And to break out of that is very hard and you leave behind people who lack (confidence) because there is nothing for them. Things are beginning to happen but there is a long way to go.”
There may be no floodlights, there may be no arching stands, there are barely dressing rooms. Yet here, in their own way and with so little help, they’ve all managed to create the most unlikely theatre of dreams.
* Tomorrow: Ewan MacKenna visits Neilstown Boxing Club in Dublin
