McGuinness buys Celtic’s selling policy
Appointed last November, Donegal’s All-Ireland winning manager works with all the development and academy players at U20 level in the club. “I’m involved in a project in terms of development,” he said. “Celtic are now bringing players in and they’re trying to develop them. They’re trying to get as much money for them as possible and they’re trying to sell them on. They’re a selling club at the moment and they’ve been very successful in identifying very talented players. These are going through the stages of development as they’re very young. If you can add anything to those players and the ones coming through the academy, it leaves the club in a very sustainable place,” said McGuinness, who was speaking at the launch of Celtic FC’s partnership with the GAA in three pilot development camps for young people called “Let’s Go, Lead Through Sport”.
Catering for boys and girls between the ages of 13 and 16, the first two will be held in Ballymote, Sligo, and Lurgan, Armagh, this summer with one scheduled to take place in Dublin later this year.
The camps will bring together young people from various sporting and cultural backgrounds using Gaelic games, soccer as well as improving the life skills of the participants in different areas.
GAA president Liam O’Neill believes the synergy between the two organisations shows how far each has come. “I could stand here smugly and say isn’t it great that the GAA is such a great organisation. The fact of the matter is that people in the past were prisoners of history and of the society in which they lived. We are fortunate that we live in a much more open society, the GAA is a much more outward looking organisation, we are reaching out to community groups, to government agencies and health programmes.
“We don’t just develop people as players, we develop them as people and this programme is just another example of that.”
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