Athlone Town FC

[EalingGreen]

Dan McDonnell reporting Athlone about to be taken over by some Canadian business man and they want Ruairi Higgins to take the jobTalk (no more than that) that RH is being lined up to take over at Coleraine in the summer.

They could certainly do with a better manager than Dean Shiels has proven to be; DS was appointed by the previous Board; a new benefactor recently took over and is spending a lot of money, incl f-t football. So if there is any truth in the rumour, I'd have thought they'd be of greater interest to RH than Athlone (certainly) or Waterford (probably), another club who've been linked to him by Dan McD.

[brendy_éire]

Remember that every other urban area in the country is growing quickly too - with Galway, Cork, Limerick and Waterford on a target of 50% expansion by 2040. So the size gap between all the cities and towns like Athlone will only have widened by then. And with it presumably the gap between them in Irish football.

I'd take those grow targets as just that; targets.
They're quite ambitious, at current employment and construction trends, likely unachievable.

I take your point though, growth doesn't mean Athlone will become more attractive. As pointed out in another thread, a larger town doesn't necessarily make it more likely to have a higher level football team, let alone a successful one. Take Limerick, Lisburn or Kilkenny as examples.
I'd be very surprised if Higgins took the job there.

[wonder88]

Its location does offer potential to grow a soccer club there. It also has history and their women's team has reached the top in recent years. I was at the playoff v Bray and they had a reasonable support their that day. Would require a substantial investment I suppose and people who know the loI well involved, but could something like what Drogheda are doing these days not be achieved there?

[EatYerGreens]

I'd take those grow targets as just that; targets.
They're quite ambitious, at current employment and construction trends, likely unachievable.

Those targets were set in 2017/18, and if you look at the 2022 census results pretty much everywhere is on track to hit them so far. Athlone grew 13% between 2011 and 2022, for example - and that was a period which included a large chunk of the bad years post-crash when there was little or no population growth/negative growth in many places.

Galway up 14% from 2011 to 2022. Your near neighbour Letterkenny grew by 17% in just the 6yrs between the 2016 and 2022 census.

The one exception for growth seems to be Sligo, which somehow just never seems to get much beyond 20,000 people.