Ballymurphy Celtic celebrate 25 years
James Kelly and J.J. Culleton. Photo: michaelorourkephotography.ie
Ballymurphy Celtic celebrated their 25th anniversary on Sunday the 2nd of February at Ballykealey House hotel. The Dinner dance was attended by over 170 people, where past and present club members were acknowledged.
The event was MC’d by members of the ‘How is he’ podcast and the special guests on the night were Waterford FC striker and Carlow native, Padraig Amond and by former FIFA referee, Michelle O’Neill.
According to Ballymurphy Celtic FC chairman Thomas Doyle, the night was a huge success.
“It was a brilliant night. The venue and the amount of people that came and how the night went, it couldn’t have gone better. It was one of the best nights we’ve had as a club in a long time”, said Doyle.
Ballymurphy Celtic currently has 330 playing members, 220 of those are juvenile players. It’s underage system was set-up in 2018, and is now one of the biggest clubs in the county.
“The celebration night brought our club and community together. It brought our parents, our adult players, our volunteers and coaches together. It was brilliant for people to learn about the history of our club. We honoured our first ever committee on the night. We also honoured numerous other past and present club members. We have a brilliant committee that helped with the event, but I would like to thank three people in particular for organising the event, Michelle Doyle, Sarah Whelan and Karen white. We had to create a new sub-committee for the dinner dance. That shows how big the event was and how important it was to us”, said Doyle.
The club are looking to use this positive evening as a springboard for the rest of the season and beyond. The club hope to build it’s own grounds in the future.
“The next step for us is to own our pitches. We won trophies at most juvenile age-groups last year and we are currently champions of the Women’s Carlow Cup. We currently rent facilities from the GAA club and others, which we are very grateful for. We need help from the FAI and local government. We need a pitch or an Astro pitch. I also want to take this opportunity to pass on our sympathies to the family of Frank murphy. We rented a pitch off Frank and our community are still in shock over the passing of Frank. We held a minute's silence at the weekend at our anniversary night, to remember Frank.”
