Club culture based on hard work

THE best feature of the FAI Carlsberg Cup final on Sunday was the fact that the two finalists, Rockmount of Cork and Bluebell United of Dublin, are clubs in the real sense of the word.

The advance of football in this country is not helped by the disproportionate number of teams to the number of clubs in competition.

In this context a club is an organisation which boasts pavilion facilities and a playing pitch. Better still if the club also boasts a social membership.

Bluebell are very much in this vogue, a club whose two adult teams reached the finals of their respective cups - their junior team will play in the final of the Lanigan Cup, a competition in the Leinster area for teams that play on Saturdays.

Bluebell, whose playing centre is Prestige Park, southwest of Dublin, have about 400 members, many of whom have supported the club since its foundation in 1946. They have darts and pool sections and a regular social programme for older members.

Rockmount, founded in 1924, are based in the north side of Cork City but the scarcity of a suitable site in this highly built-up area meant they had to move to Whitechurch, seven miles outside the city, to establish a base.

There they have first-class pavilion facilities and two playing pitches.

Following an extension, the club has six separate dressing-rooms and a changing room complete with showers and toilet for referees and their assistants.

The extension cost the club more than €60,000 and they received a government grant of 70% of that from Lotto funds.

Rockmount had hoped to fund their playing programmes out of their social activities and bar facilities when they established the Whitechurch base. The location, however, did not appeal to social members for obvious reasons and club officials abandoned the idea of a bar about six years ago.

The lack of a regular income from the bar created its own pressures, but the club is well supported by sponsors and fundraising events.

They enjoy particularly generous support from their main sponsor, the New Furniture Centre, a company owned by former player and club trustee, Teddy Barry, and they run a weekly lotto.

Rockmount have up to nine underage teams, from aged nine to 17, but this season they are not represented at U18 level.

Roy Keane is the most famous past-player of Rockmount and has brought a lot of attention to the club.

But they have earned a reputation in their own right with three final appearances in the FAI Intermediate Cup in the past five years.

The fact that a majority of their senior players came up through the ranks is of particular satisfaction to Rockmount officials and it reflects the success of the club on the pitch.

Club secretary John O’Shea said: “We won the Intermediate Cup for the first time in 1999 and 10 of the 11 players in that team had played with us in schoolboy ranks. Pat

Oldham was the only one not in that category and he is very much a Rockmount player now, he captained the winning team on Sunday.”

Some clubs at this level pay some of their players and their management/coaching staff but Rockmount are proud of their amateur status. The facilities at Whitechurch would not be at their disposal if they had paid players.

Their 1999 Intermediate Cup success led to a new development - “We found there were players from other clubs wanting to join us,” said O’Shea.

“We will always have a flow of players coming through from the U17 and the U18 teams so we will always have a strong playing squad at adult level. We are viewed as successful at that level which is why others want to join and we welcome them, because we are in the business of helping young men play football.”

Amateur football will never be a major spectator sport because the unaffiliated will always measure the level of expertise against the professional game available nightly on TV.

But if you love sport there is always satisfaction to be gained from watching an honest and uninhibited contest between two teams interested only in playing to the best of their ability and chasing a win as if their very lives depended upon it.

The FAI Junior Cup final on Saturday at Ozier Park between Limerick’s Fairview Rangers and Waterford’s Carrick United will illustrate that.

Nowhere will the contrasting emotions of elation and disappointment be more acutely felt than in the dressing-rooms at the final whistle.