Upgrades Begin at Glen Road
22 Feb 2010

LEISURE LOOK TO THE FUTURE

This week saw Sport & Leisure take another step towards bringing Irish League football to their Glen Road home when work began to complete the necessary upgrading to ensure their ground meets the required Irish League standard for season 2010/11.

Leisure plan to erect a 200 seater stand, a new outside toilet block, a turnstile area as well as new disabled parking and seating arrangements with the bill coming close to £150,000.
Helped in no small measure by Sport NI who have grant aided the project to the tune of £ 86,250.

Secretary John Morgan points out that “ Naturally we will always be grateful to Larne for not only allowing us to use their ground but also securing our entry into the Championship. Their Chairman Archie Smyth and manager Paul Millar couldn’t have made us more welcome but happy as we are at Inver Park it will be nice to be getting our own place ready for games on a Saturday.”

Hugh J O’Boyle are the contractors tasked with the March 31st deadline and John goes on to point out that as well as the builders work the club members have been busy doing their bit. “ The club met with Sport NI and we were allowed to undertake some of the work ourselves, as well as extensive groundwork’s behind the near goal we also replaced the dugouts, completed the spectator fencing and renewed the advertising hoardings. We were very lucky in that the changing rooms already met with IFA standards, but to be honest that was more to do with the foresight of the original architect Dermot MacRandal than any great master plan on our part, though I still think they could do with a lick of paint.”

Leisure have come a long way since their formation in 1978 but chairman John Connolly insists nothing has really changed. “ All we ever wanted to do was play football at the highest level available to us and currently that’s Irish League, but while in the Amateur League and indeed the Dunmurry League before that it was important for us to keep pushing and try and work our way through the leagues, I think that’s what has kept the club going. It hasn’t been easy but we’d never forgive ourselves if we didn’t at least try.”

Their current project has been almost five years in the planning but it hasn’t exactly been plain sailing.

More than once in the last six months it looked touch and go as to whether the upgrade would get the go ahead in time, but as John Morgan explained the interested parties pulled together to ensure it happened, “certainly things looked very bleak around Christmas, it was always the intention to have builders on site just before the holidays, unfortunately that didn’t happen but fortunately Sport NI pulled out all the stops in tying up the loose ends and it was thanks to them that permission to proceed was granted.”

Chairman Connolly thinks that their proposed return to Glen Road in August comes at just the right time as in his opinion football in the West of the city has never been healthier, “well yes I do, because when we were accepted into the Amateur League in 1990, I think we were the first Glen Road team to be accepted since the great Cromac Albion in 68/69, now the West has excellent representation throughout the League. Ford FC, trailblazers for many years, have now been joined by clubs like Immaculata, recently voted Junior Team of the Year, Plunkett, Albion Star, St.Theresa’s and not forgetting Colin Valley whose committee’s work off the pitch most surely mean that within a year or two they will have one of the best Intermediate set ups in Greater Belfast.

If things go to plan and Donegal Celtic win promotion the West could have a team competing in the Premiership, a team in the Championship, and numerous teams in the Amateur League with at least a couple of those pushing for Intermediate football. Surely that’s got to be good for football in the area.”

With the work only just starting I think we can safely predict a very busy summer ahead for the club, and a word of warning for the players, don’t be at all surprised if the two John’s are handing out paint brush’s at pre-season training.