Young footballers 'putting their best footing forward'

The industrious young members of a West Offaly football team have spent the past month on the bog for a novel club fundraiser.

Since they got their summer holidays from school at the start of June, the members of the St Rynagh's U17 football team have been busily employed saving turf in the Cloghan area for local people, who are too busy to do it themselves. To date the 30-member squad has raised almost €5,000, which will go towards purchasing a new kit and training gear.

The person who came up with this most midlands of fundraising ideas is Odhran McInytre, who coaches the team along with Joe Carroll and Ivan Hanamy.

“It's a bit different and a bit out there,” he told the Offaly Independent. “The boys wanted to get kit. We got stuff last year and I didn't want to be looking for a handout from their parents as is normally the case.

“Lots of lads would be playing hurling as well as football. We want to keep expenses as low as we can and there are damn all jobs out there for lads their age.

“I got a brain wave. I didn't want to do my own turf and I told them that I'd throw them some money.”

As news spread that there was a group of fit young men for hire that were willing and able to save people's turf, their fundraiser gained momentum. They quickly reached their original target of €1,500, which would cover the cost of a new playing kit for the squad.

They are now close to reaching their final target of €5,000, enough money to make them the best dressed underage football squad in the country.

“They are almost at their target. When they saw how well it was going the basically asked to get more kit. Most of them are doing three to four days a week on the bog. You have some lads doing three days and we are trying to keep lads to doing a maximum of four days a week. If a lad does Monday to Thursday, they won't have to do Friday and the lads who are doing most of the work have the added bit of incentive that they will get an extra bit of kit,” Odhran said.

In addition to offering their services on the bog, the lads have also been doing other odd jobs around their locality including covering silage, painting fences and some gardening. Their efforts have been so successful that Odhran reckons that they may have created a little cottage industry for themselves. Now that their work is almost completed on the bogs around Cloghan, he says that they are open to all offers and are willing to travel!

Aside from raising the money for their new kit, the team has benefited in other ways from their month on the bog together.

“I found that it has been brilliant for team bonding and they have had great craic. They are almost enjoying going to bog. The have bonded a lot closer together. Discipline wise, there temperament has improved on the pitch and it has improved their sense of community,” Odhran says.

“Some days if they got a good bank of turf they would have a race to see who could foot 100 metres of turf first. The lad who finished first would them jump in to help whoever the slowest was. It's been excellent.” The squad has also been in contact with the local cancer charity Dochas and the mental health charity Jigsaw, which will both have their logos on their new kit. There are also plans being made to hold a barbecue fundraiser for both organisations, restrictions permitting.

Proud of the team for “putting their best footing forward”, Odhran says that older generations can be a bit quick to criticise teenagers sometimes.

“If anything goes wrong they are the first group that people on top of for hanging around street corners and things like. Everyone forgets that they were young once,” he said.