Summary of Shankill FC activities during 2019 calendar year

Dear Members

On behalf of the committee and team managers, I wanted to take this opportunity to outline some of the many activities and projects that went on in our club during the 2019 calendar year. It was a very busy year and we saw some fantastic contributions by so many people, both on and off the pitch. We want to recall a few of the highlights and show you some of the things the committee and club volunteers have been up to during the year.

Club membership

We have 25 teams, 2 academies, over 400 members, several new team coaches, 2 new committee members, 1 new welfare officer. We would love for more people to join our club committees, including our recently convened social committee. We are especially interested in attracting more women to improve the balance in managing various elements across the club.

Clubhouse reopening ceremony

Oct 13th, 2018 will surely go down as one of the darkest days in the club’s history when we discovered thieves had stolen the lead guttering from the roof of our clubhouse and torrential rain poured in, resulting in the clubhouse being completely flooded. In contrast, March 23rd, 2019 must be one of the brightest days for the club when we reopened our facility following 3 months of renovation by our very own Barry Hall. We redesigned the entire clubhouse and added a host of new features to better serve the club’s needs. And what a result!

2019 Shankill FC tournaments

We planned & executed another very successful Shankill FC Champions league event again this year from July 8th to 21st. This is our club’s annual flagship event and we had 250 girls and boys taking part this year over the two weeks, including some players from Spain.

We also ran our annual Brady’s cup event for U9, U10 which was a great success.

In August, Shankill FC held our inaugural ‘Academy Games’ for boys born 2012 & 2013. We welcomed 9 teams from Dublin and Wicklow to compete on the day. It was a great success with some great football played on a lovely summer’s day.

Club Communications

We submitted regular entries into the SCAN magazine during 2019 and we will ensure it continues each month. It would be great to get some help from someone who is skilled in that space so please let me know if you have a couple of hours spare per month to help. We held monthly committee meetings, and team managers meetings, during the year to ensure everyone was kept up to speed on what is happening and discuss any issues or concerns at team level. We continue to make changes to our club website to help circulate information and make it easier to find what you need. The club Facebook pages are also very busy which is excellent. Please let us know if we can do better with communications

Social events

We held a Halloween table quiz in the Shankill Tennis club which was great fun. We had an excellent turnout and many thanks to Dave Griffin for acting as MC for the evening. We also held our annual Pitch’N’Putt competition for the kids

Christmas in the village

We were delighted to take part in the Shankill ‘Christmas in the village’ event again this year. As usual we had our Shankill FC stand out in front of Brady’s and got to meet many of our members during the day and also sign up some new members.

Club gear

The club has decided on our new range of club gear. This decision was needed as our current strip will be unavailable from the providers this year, so it was necessary to make the change. The new strip is on order and jerseys will be distributed to all teams in the coming weeks. Training strips, etc. are available for purchase from the clubhouse.

Team events

Shankill F.C. U8 players attended the National Sports Centre in Abbotstown for the 2019 Futsal Tournament which involved several games over a four-week period. Futsal is a derivative of soccer and played with five-person teams on a basketball style court with no walls and a smaller, low-bouncing ball.
U 13 girls won their league and were promoted to MGL premier league. The girls also played at half time during the Shamrock Rovers vs UCD game on Mar 29th in Tallaght stadium. Great experience for the girls
Shankill FC Under 16’s had a great weekend at the Prestatyn Football Tournament in Wales. There was a very high standard of competition and the team did really well. Shankill FC won the Fair Play Award and Conor Delaney won the Under 16 Player of the Tournament Award.
We secured the services of Bray Wanderers Goalkeeping Coach Ian Fowler to run weekly training sessions from October to December. Very positive feedback received by everyone involved.
Shankill FC U18 Youth team are league cup champions
Shankill FC Under 11s reached the Cup Final
Shankill FC U12 won the Tony Hackett Cup
Shankill FC U17 team won the Buswells Hotel Shield.
Congratulations to Aishling Meehan and Jessica Moore who were both picked in 2019 MGL academy squads. Both girls play for our U13 girls’ team.
Well done to Aoibh Hall who was chosen as the head coach of the MGL U12 academy team this year. Aoibh is also undertaking her EUFA B licence training
We completed a Sports injury & AED training session for managers again this year
Several team managers attended FAI PDP/Kickstart coaching training which has huge benefits for the kids from both a welfare and skills perspective

This is just a short list of the many activities that took place during 2019. We want to thank all the players and parents/guardians for the superb support you continue to give to the club. Please let us know at info@shankillfc.ie if we can do more or if you would like to help. You can also keep up to speed by following us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ShankillFootballClub/

Kind regards

Dave Mulcahy