New football club and academy planned for North Dublin

NORTH DUBLIN will play host to both a state-of-the art football academy as well as a new football club, if ambitious proposals revealed yesterday are realised.

Fingal County Council plan to develop the complex — which will cost at least €10 million and feature full size indoor and outdoor all-weather pitches and ancillary facilities — at Turvey, between Swords and Donabate.

Longer-term, the plans also envisage the construction of a small sports stadium.

More immediately, the council are also facilitating the application for a licence for a new senior club, called Sporting Fingal FC, to participate in the third tier League of Ireland A Championship when it kicks off next season.

Former Irish international and League of Ireland legend Liam Buckley, who is spearheading the dual project, said that the club licence application would go in before next week’s deadline.

The council will not be involved in financing the club which has outside investors and what Buckley describes as a “sound business plan”.

Sporting Fingal, if successful in its application, would begin life playing out of Morton Stadium and, upon construction, have close links with the proposed training complex in Turvey.

Said John O’ Brien, Senior Executive Officer, Fingal County Council Community, Culture and Sports Division: “The Academy complex will be best in class in the country, a state-of-the-art venue which will provide the best facilities available.”

The complex is envisaged as a learning centre for coaches and players, with 60 clubs and some 600 teams already active in the Fingal area, and it would also have links to the FAI’s own Emerging Talent programme.

Stressing the community-orientated nature of the project, Liam Buckley, who played some of his football in Spain and Belgium, said: “This concept is unique in Ireland and I hope that having experienced football and its effect on communities abroad, I can bring something different to Fingal.”