The hard years when Castlebar Celtic had no home ground recalled

CLUB CENTENARY SPECIAL: BY FRANK BURKE

DURING my tenure as secretary of Celtic in the 1980s, the pitch at Celtic Park was holding water and needed to have a serious overhaul as regards putting an effective drainage system in place to alleviate the problem.

With this in mind ‘feelers’ were put out to see what company or individuals would be best suited to advise us on what needed to be done.

We were put in contact with Prunty Contractors Ltd., a company who specialised in football pitch drainage.

Their involvement in sports ground drainage came about in 1967 when a school in Enniskillen sought their advice on improving its playing fields.

With the help of John Mulqueen, Tourmakeady, of the Agricultural Research Institute, the concept of the sand carpet emerged and the first sand carpet pitch was constructed at the aforementioned Enniskilleen site.

This new system propelled the standard of playing fields to a higher level than ever before, offering all-year round playability, even in the most inclement weather conditions.

John Mulqueen was a great believer in sand carpeting as it filtered down through to the soil and helped drainage and irrigation, thus resulting in better quality playing surfaces.

A meeting was arranged with Joe Prunty and John Mulqueen at Celtic Park.

Joe Prunty said that they usually only did Gaelic and rugby pitches. I thought to myself that this was a strange statement.

After all, a football pitch is a football pitch regardless of what sport is played on it.

His next question was ‘had we money to finance the drainage, which would be in the region of IR£5,000?’

My heart took a turn for the worse as we were barely keeping our heads above water. When I relayed this to Mr. Prunty, I could see he was not impressed. Understandably so, perhaps!

Another meeting was arranged the following week to coordinate plans for the pitch. We were pressing ahead regardless of the fact that we had no money. Only John Mulqueen turned up!

John Mulqueen was a native of Tourmakeady and a gentleman of the highest order. He did everything he could to assist us.

On a subsequent visit he dug up a small section of the ground with a spade and informed me that it was at one time a lake, as there were small fish shells and such in the sample.

He also noted that the whole area was resting on a massive area of bedrock that went as far as Roadstone in Moneen and beyond.

He inspected the whole area, walking as far as the St. Mary’s pitch at the hospital and the adjacent graveyard looking at the outlet for the drain that flowed at the side of Celtic Park.

He said the drain needed ‘deeping’ and this would be a headache as the bedrock was a major problem and would have to be removed to allow the excess water to get away.

How right he was.

Looking around he noticed that there were a lot of rushes growing on the periphery of the pitch. This, he said, was a sign that water was coming up from under the ground and before the pitch could be drained this problem would have to be rectified.

On his next visit John brought with him plans for the drainage. These were very specific and detailed what was necessary to be undertaken.

First drainage pipes had to be put down at a depth of six feet. A second set of drainage pipes would be laid near the surface to facilitate the need to take away surface water.

This was the herring bone drainage system where the smaller drains are connected to the main drain.

The club enlisted the help of Steve McLaughlin, Newport Road, who had a long association with the club, as clerk of works. He was employed by the Western Health Board as a quantity surveyor and was a long-serving member of the club’s youths committee.

The contract was awarded to Padraic Regan, Hollymount.

After much toing-and-froing the works were completed but not without a day out in court. Mr. Regan claimed he had not been paid in full and that there was a sum of IR£700 outstanding. However, a settlement was agreed before going into the courtroom. Mr. Regan agreed to settle for IR£500.

ON THE ROAD

While the work was taking place at Celtic Park, we were left without a ground to play on. We were depending on the generosity of clubs in the Mayo League to come to our assistance.

This entailed teams travelling from venue to venue, meaning we were on the road a lot. Many clubs did come to our aid and none more so than John Kenneally and the Rowland family in Glenhest who made their pitch available to us on numerous occasions.

On one occasion we were drawn at home to a Dublin club, whose name escapes me at the moment, in the FAI Junior Cup. I had agreed to meet them at Celtic Park and take them to Glenhest. Their secretary asked me how far it was to the ground. I said roughly 15 minutes.

After travelling for about 30 minutes the secretary said: ‘‘I thought you said the pitch was 15 minutes away.’’

‘‘Yes,’’ I said, ‘‘but that’s in a car. It takes a bit longer in a 56-seater bus!’’

Celtic beat them and we progressed to the next round. I think the journey and the picturesque beauty of Glenhest and the lake waters lapping on the edge of the playing ground had an upsetting effect on their players.

Our plight of not having a pitch was alleviated by Ray Flaherty, Lightfort, Errew, Castlebar, who offered us the use of one of his fields in Lightford. It was an ideal venue and a great relief to the club to have a ‘temporary permanent’ playing ground.

The following season in the FAI Junior Cup we were drawn at home to St. Brendan’s, Dublin. The same scenario unfolded, meeting their team at Celtic Park to show them to our ‘home venue’.

The one drawback about Ray’s field was it had a very long, narrow boreen leading to the venue. The 56-seater bus had great difficulty in manoeuvring down the ‘road’. One player was heard to exclaim: ‘‘Jeezus, we’ll never get out of here.’’

Celtic won and the visitors returned to their bus. However, the Celtic players had arrived first for the game and parked their cars in the small parking area around the derelict cottage at the end of the boreen.

The Dublin bus was the last to arrive and blocked the boreen meaning that nobody could move until the bus was gone.

The bus driver deserved a medal as he had to reverse the big bus all the way back to the main road. Another Dublin team that could not cope with the rigours of a visit to the rural areas of Castlebar. It’s always nice to put one over on the Dubs!

The new pitch finally opened in August 1984 with a match against Bournemouth FC, managed by Harry Redknapp.

In the years since many new innovations have taken place at Celtic Park and it is a credit to all concerned that it is one of the finest venues in Connaught and can equal that of many other bigger and more affluent clubs in Ireland.