Groundsman Award

I see Noel Connolly was beaten to the Grondsman Award by the Derry City Groundsman. His name????? Tommie Shiels. :p

Anyway, I think Noel expected this, there was some late change to include Derry in the consideration for the award. Noel still does a fantastic job. In his award citation at the dinner the other night, it was noted he prepares Terryland with as much care for an u-12 game as for an Eircom League game.

It's been a brilliant surface since he took it over.

It led to some long time supporters questioning whether or not we'd have been better off with a quagmire, since we have spent more time in the lower division since Terryland was "turned around".

A lot of the so called big names in the LoI were always moaning about coming to Galway and playing on a s***e pitch & how awful everything was. Also a few of the local players used to enjoy the discomfort of the "stars" from the big sides when they trotted out on to the old Terryland.

Overall, Noel deserves great credit for producing the best football playing surface in the Republic.

He cant be praised enough. The sacred sod is a credit to him. Well done Noel.

I was dissappionted not to see Neol pick-up the award but fair play 2 him still. Terryland's pitch is always looking smashing!

id say the west coast of ireland gets more rain then anywhere else and so terryland takes on alot more water then the brandywell would.plus theres under age games played in terryland while i doubt there are any or many played in the brandywell.so for these 2 reasons noel has had to deal with more problems and thus i think deserved it more.