Club facilities

The Ballingeary Gaelic Football clubhouse in west Cork, that cost €1.2m to build has been demolished and must be rebuilt after difficulties with subsidence. It was just three years old. Sad to see as a lot of fundraising etc was done but hopefully they will get the new one sorted soon enough.

Made me wonder what type of facilities members here have got in their clubs? Clubhouse? Bar? Dressing rooms (how many?) function room? handball alley? snooker table/s? pitches? all weather facilities?

My club? We don't have anything, we play on a borrowed rugby pitch for a hell of a lot of money every year, we have no clubhouse, bar or changing rooms never mind the other brilliant things that you mention. Our county doesn't even have it's own ground or clubhouse and within the county we only have 2 full size pitches.

Then we have the GAA giving off to us saying that all British counties MUST have their own facilities with adequate clubrooms yet they never even offer us a red cent to help with our sourcing yet they throw money to counties with plenty of grounds and good facilities (in Britland i'm talking about). We have lost access to 4 green land areas due to lack of help from the GAA HQ yet they keep busting our balls. 1.2 million yoyos for a clubhouse that was knocked down? We'd just be grateful for the rubble!

We have a club house including bar...of course.... indoor arena gym dressing rooms committee room and 4 dressing rooms 2 full size 1 under 10/8 pitch and a big car park!

We have 4 dressing rooms, a referee's room, a hurling wall, 2 full size pitches, 2 dugouts, floodlights and a portacabin.

Not one to boast but we have two used railway carriages and a sturdy whitethorn hedge which is grand in summertime...

We have 2 dressing rooms with working showers in the away one.

After rejoining my old club which i was away from for a couple of years coaching another clubs camogie team and playing for their hurlers i am glad to say ive rejoined a club which is set to open a new senior pitch and juvenile pitch meaning we will have three pitches in total also a social club which has a bar and two changing rooms.

We came from hard times and i only know, growing up in a club that had no windows and had three exterior cages protecting the front doors weve come a long way at our new premises we are there 12 years now, the old bumpy pitch is well gone and the old social club with no windows and the constant smoke damage smell from loyalist attacks is now a thing of the past. Im proud to be a endas man, the people of the club have worked hard to get where they are and long may it continue.

We also have an irish language primary school on the premises which comes in handy for cultural events and extra facilities!

I feel sorry for the clubs with nothing and the GAA does need to be more active, earlier this year the club i was with previously and another neighbouring club joined forces to get the council to put up changing facilities at the council pitch which their juveniles used they campaigned through door to door canvasing and lobbying of councillors, they got the changing facilities guaranteed (not built yet), this is only a token gesture given that both clubs adult teams have to go outside of belfast for a senior playing field - i find this out of order as young people should be able to go and watch their adult teams and adult teams should be allowed to play in their own area.

We have one pitch, 4 dressing rooms and a bar (snooker table)...but we're getting new facilities out the road

My home club is a junior champioship side
We built a centre back in the late 1980's most of the work was done by ANCO (now fas)

We have
2 pitches (one of which was donated last year by a local hotelier)
A centre with indoor basketball court, Gym, Indoor Squash court, 4 dressing rooms,
floodlit training area (roughly half a pitch),
There is room for a bar but none was ever put in - there are two pubs within 100 yards of the grounds who put on sambos etc on a turn-about basis.

I'd say our level of facilities to quality of football ratio is higher than most.

Right beside the Gaa pitches there is a pitch and putt club (a small clubhouse), soccer pitch and dressing rooms, cricket pitch and dressing rooms and 3 tennis courts and down the road a swimming pool.

I know it has nothing to do with Gaa but I thought I'd put it out there.

OMAR wrote:We built a centre back in the late 1980's most of the work was done by ANCO (now fas)

Probably cost about €10M so .................

Jayo Cluxton wrote:

OMAR wrote:We built a centre back in the late 1980's most of the work was done by ANCO (now fas)

Probably cost about €10M so .................

I recall at stage that there was 10 people employed at the centre on an "Anco Scheme" post completion. Their job consisted of putting out chairs for tuesday night bingo and restacking them by Thursday to facilitate use of hall for basketball.
Rather than ten of them making short work of the weekly project they used to play cards the previous day with two losers having to take on the task whilst the remaining eight went for a 90 min tea break rolled up the sleeves and then went back to the cards.
During the summer months they used to subcontract - each one of the ten would throw in £2 - and they would pay some 14 year old £20 to do the task.

My own club facilities have gone from being one of the worst in the county to easily of the best.

Our original pitch was situated beside a burn and so when it rained heavily the pitch was more like a swimming pool than anything, it has since been upgraded to a prunty pitch as significant cost both in its laying and in its subsequent upkeep. You need a signed letter from both great great grandparents before you are allowed to use the pitch though, unless of course your the senior mens football team!!!!!!

We also now have a training field which was a bit of a bog when its wet but is slowly getting better with new drainage etc every summer again at cost. We recently put up new changing rooms which includes 4 new dressing rooms a fully equipped gym and conference room.

Our old changing rooms contain 4 dressing rooms meeting rooms and a recently refurbished handball alley.

If as much time effort and money was put into bringing through quality footballers and hurlers we would be a great club - sadly i think too many of our committee are more worried about what our facilities look like to those driving by than they are about how we perform on the field - a typical AGM involves hours talking about overdrafts debts fund-raising etc and about 30 seconds on how the underage teams are doing!!!!

Time for a changing of the guard i think............

OMAR wrote:My home club is a junior champioship side
We built a centre back in the late 1980's most of the work was done by ANCO (now fas)

We have
2 pitches (one of which was donated last year by a local hotelier)
A centre with indoor basketball court, Gym, Indoor Squash court, 4 dressing rooms,
floodlit training area (roughly half a pitch),
There is room for a bar but none was ever put in - there are two pubs within 100 yards of the grounds who put on sambos etc on a turn-about basis.

I'd say our level of facilities to quality of football ratio is higher than most.

If you want to see shocking Facilities:Quality ratios travel to the West of Cavan Omar! Corlough recently opened a fantastic new pitch and dressing rooms.. Templeport have two pitches with full lights on both so games can be played at night, 4 dressing rooms and a gym, won Ulster grounds of the year when it opened. Kildallan also with fantastic grounds in the town. All within 10 minutes of each other and all in the basement of Division 3.
Good underage in all 3 however especially Templeport..

dammon wrote:We have one pitch, 4 dressing rooms and a bar (snooker table)...but we're getting new facilities out the road

I played against your club a few years back in a preseason friendly, i think it was at the new centre of excellence for meath though was only out the road a bi,t excellent set up 3rd generation pitches and all, the we were brought back to the grounds at navan for tea and sandwiches after is that the same pitch the county use in navan? It looked in good shape for the time of year, february i think it was.

We have a large training area, about the size of two full size pitches along with a bit extra, including a big hill in the corner which is heavily used in the winter training! A few years ago new dressing rooms were built here along with a gym and room to store all the training gear. The main training pitch used to be a bit uneven but about 4 years ago it was completely redone and a new pitch laid along with all the extras, new posts, new nets behind goals etc, and it's a grand job now.

Across the road is the main pitch and clubhouse(basically a minor road runs through the grounds, but with a large area all around for parking), the clubhouse used to be fairly basic but a number of years ago it was done up and an extension built, now it has a full bar upstairs along with a couple of meeting rooms which are used for different purposes depending on any function being held. It's not massive but does the job. Then of course a few dressing rooms underneath leading onto the pitch. On the other side of the pitch are old dressing rooms which come in handy if we're hosting a double-header or a blitz or the like. Recently at the far end of the main pitch a new small training area was developed with an astro-turf surface, it's mostly used for juveniles but can come in handy for other things. Alot of pitches there but between seniors and juveniles, in football, hurling and ladies you'd need all that area for everyone to train, even when it is spaced over the week.

-2 full size pitches with floodlights
-An underage pitch
-A weights room
-A bar that serves food and has a pool table
-Meeting room
-Astro turf indoor arena
-Multifunction room
-Function room that gets rented out for parties and stuff
-8 dressing rooms
-A ref's room
-4 dugouts
-A stand that holds 200 people
-Club shop that carries gear/hurleys/helmets ect.

A field with 2 goalposts and 2 dugouts.
2 indoor dressing rooms with benches to sit on and showers which work if given long enough to warm up.
An outdoor tap for water.
A small car park.

Division 3 (out of 5) in Kerry.