Can we please get back to talking football
I’m glad all the Bunratty baiting seems to be dying down. Maybe the Newtown baiting would die too (or at least the personal element of it that is directed towards one or two particular people).
Just to set the record straight no-one from the Bunratty club claims that it is a big club. It has had recent junior success relatively unique to its age of which we are justifiably proud and it stands well beside the records of some of our more “illustrious” neighbours. The club went through a difficult period over the last couple of years and is getting itself back on track having had either an Under 16, Under 17, or Youths team in each of the last few years and this year have a return of our B team prominently featuring our own Cousin Syl…… It is not without the odd wobble, some of which have been prominently discussed recently on this site.
Without wanting to start a war – Plastic Pitch before you laugh too much, your Lifford friends might remember that a certain recent Munster Junior game they went on to win would not have gone ahead if Bunratty had not brought a spare set of Jerseys by accident (even though they were the away team) so the problem is not unique to Bunratty.
From a schoolboy perspective, Bunratty in line with many other clubs do not have a town base to develop schoolboys from. We also have a problem on the stewardship side from an age point of view and don't have many ex-junior players at all yet (never mind available for coaching). In practice what happens is that we have somewhere between half and a full panel of players every few years at one age group that we try and keep together. This is initially augmented with school friends of the lads that they can get to play with Bunratty. Most of the time these will gradually get to a stage where they can compete in their leagues and every so often (as happened in the late nineties) there is a unique crop that sweeps before them. As happens to all teams that get to that stage, (including the bigger schoolboy clubs i.e. Newtown, Newmarket, Sixmilebridge, Lifford – I won’t continue in case I forget someone) once a team becomes successful at underage, some of the better players both locally and in the county are tempted to join them, in the main solicited by players rather than management. In Bunratty we have lost players recently to both Sixmilebridge and Newmarket for that reason.
From a junior club perspective, it often happens that clubs spawn other clubs as every year a significant amount of players come out of youth teams with only 11 places on their own junior “A” club team. These generally fan out. This has happened a lot around the Shannon, Newmarket, Sixmilebridge area and what is actually unique to this area is that many of the “smaller” clubs punch above their weight in getting to and surviving in the Premier Division. The spawning actually happened to Bunratty a number of years ago as soccer became more popular out our neck of the woods (excuse the pun) and Cratloe Celtic was formed. The Cratloe area had previously been a generous supplier of players to Bunratty and built on this to form a strong club of their own, now having a bad time at junior level but will be back I’m sure.
Short and brief history trying to give those that see fit to look down their noses a bit of background that may help them get over their pre-conceptions as to what a club should or shouldn’t be – now back to lurking in the background!!!!!!!
