Connect with us

Sport

Track and Field of Dreams: How an ambitious goal became a reality

Published

5 years ago

on

A stunning aerial shot of Killarney Valley AC Arena.

After years of planning and hard work, the lights have finally been switched on at the Killarney Valley AC Arena. This week Killarney Valley coach and committee member Tomás Griffin tells Adam Moynihan how the club’s big dream became a reality.

 

Adam Moynihan: Tomás, congratulations. The arena looks spectacular.

Tomás Griffin: Thanks, Adam. We’re really, really proud of it. We hope that it’ll allow us to grow the athletics club, and also benefit the broader community in whatever way we can.

 

I know it has been a long process for the club. Can you tell me where the whole concept came from?

The idea really started with my brother, Jerry, about 10 years ago. He deserves an awful lot of credit for keeping people energised and involved when we thought that it couldn’t be done. I must also mention Cathal O’Brien who has worked tirelessly behind the scenes since Day 1. There were lots of hurdles.

Killarney Valley Athletics Club (formerly Spa/Muckross AC) rebranded around seven years ago. Prior to that, Jerry and Bríd Stack and Jean Courtney and Con Lynch would have been doing a lot of the coaching, based in various GAA pitches that they could get some time on. The club was just bouncing along really. Some great athletes were produced but some would have moved to other clubs because facilities are important.

That’s where the idea came from. Let’s build a facility of our own, and then we’ll have a better chance of developing the sport beyond juvenile level.

 

So, what came next?

The next step to take it from a dream to a possibility was land. Where could we possibly find a place to put a facility? And the type of facility you can build is dictated by the land that you can acquire. The gold standard ambition is to have a full 400-metre Olympic standard athletics track but the reality is that you’d need an enormous amount of space. Based on property prices in Killarney, the club could never acquire that kind of land.

The idea of having it as a smaller facility and squeezing it in some place started to evolve. The committee had conversations with a couple of other sporting organisations and we wanted to partner with them, but really other clubs were reluctant to allow that happen, which was fine. We had to move on from the idea of putting a track around what other clubs had.

 

How did the final location (alongside St Brendan’s College on the New Road) arrive on the table?

A fortunate conversation with St Brendan’s and Principal Seán Coffey came about because a few of us, including Jerry, are past pupils of the Sem and we knew that there was a piece of ground inside there that was gone to waste. There were dilapidated outdoor basketball courts and a green area that was not being used for anything.

Seán suggested that we could maybe form a partnership with St Brendan’s Trust, which is essentially the church, who own a lot of the land. Killarney Valley AC had been renting St Brendan’s Hall for indoor training in the wintertime and we thought that maybe we could do something different here.

 

Fill me in on the financial side of things. How much did the project cost?

The total project from start to finish is after costing €520,000. There were lots of challenges along the way. Firstly, it took longer than we were anticipating because of weather. When you’re laying a track you need temperatures to be a certain level. You also need very little rain, which is always going to be a challenge. There were other delays as well with trying to get contractors lined up, so all of that would have escalated the price.

The original plan and the original projection was that it could be done for around €350,000. That changed because of the delays. Our ambition was always just to have the athletics track but the astro turf came in and changed the projected price to €520,000.

 

How did the fundraising go?

We managed to raise €400,000 in total. Through our own fundraising, which was done through GoFundMe pages and local businesses who pitched in behind the scenes – and we’re going to name and thank those businesses in an organised way over the next couple of months – we generated around €200,000. A lot of effort went into that.

The balance came from Sports Capital funding, County Council funding and Leader funding. We also got a donation from the Tomar Trust, which supports community-based projects that are being done for the right reasons.

So, we’re still left with a gap of €120,000. We’ve just relaunched our GoFundMe page with new video footage of the place now that it’s finished.

 

[caption id="attachment_34847" align="alignnone" width="1000"] An aerial view of Killarney Valley AC Arena.[/caption]

 

The arena itself is a sight behold. How long is the track?

It’s a 200-metre track with four lanes. It has a 100-metre sprinting straight. On the straight, there’s a finish line for 60-metre sprints and 80-metre sprints.

The fact that it’s a 200-metre track instead of a 400-metre track could be seen as a challenge but we’ve made sure that the bends aren’t too tight. The track itself is a permeable surface so water just drains straight through. It’s cushioned, so it’s a really lovely surface to run on. Another interesting point is that, as we know, the wind has an enormous influence on sprints. 99% of our winds are southwesterly, and our sprinting straight will benefit from southwesterly winds. That took thinking and planning.

We have an Olympic standard high jump set-up that is possibly, based on what I’ve seen around the country, the best in Ireland. Our long jump run-up is 50 metres long, which is Olympic standard, and the pit is 9 metres – the world record is 8.95 metres, so we’ve left five centimetres for someone to break it!

We’ve managed to cover off every discipline that you could possibly need to do, and we squeezed it into half the space that would normally be available.

 

And the pitch is available to rent?

Yes. Because we’ve got the debt, we need to address it and astro turf rentals are a way to do that. Insurance is very important so anyone who wishes to rent it has to provide their own insurance, which effectively means clubs. If a random group wish to rent the pitch they can, but they need to buy standalone insurance and we can help them get that.

There has been huge interest so far – we have very limited hours left. We’ve had good support from local clubs who needed an extra place. It’s 55 metres long and 32 metres wide, so it’s plenty big enough for seven-a-side or even 10-a-side for juvenile teams. The surface is top class.

But it brings another challenge. There are running costs, there are maintenance costs, there are insurance costs… That requires co-operation and understanding from the broader community as well. The track will wear out. The pitch will wear out. We need to be free of our debt so that we can invest all the money from the rentals into a sinking fund, so that in 10 years’ time when the track wears out – and we hope it does wear out because that means it’s being used – we’ve got the money to resurface it. The same goes for the pitch.

It’s not a business. We’re just a committee of people who want the facility to live forever.

 

How beneficial will the track be for Killarney Valley AC moving forward? It must be an exciting time for the club.

It is. We managed to open the place and turn on the lights during the pandemic, and facilitate the groups that are allowed to train. That, in itself, has been exciting.

In the past, we were very limited in what we could do. As a result of that, your skill levels as a coach get limited also. For us as coaches, the new facilities will allow us to up our skill levels, which will be very important. This in turn will feed into the ambition of the club. Our end goal, which is on the horizon already based on all the youth athletes that have been turning up to training, is that within a 24-month period, and hopefully by next summer, we’ll have a men’s team in the National League of athletics.

Keeping girls involved is a challenge and our way of addressing that is to also set the goal of having a female team in the National League of athletics, probably within 36 months.

 

And the arena isn’t just for Killarney Valley AC…

It isn’t, and this is a very important thing for the public to know, especially people who may not have any involvement with athletics or may never have any intention to get involved. All of the schoolchildren in Killarney, through their schools in a managed way, have free access to our facility from 8.30am to 4.30pm during the school term.

There are approximately 3,000 schoolchildren in the Killarney area, the majority of whom are within 500 metres of the facility. That’s a huge amount of people that we can expose to a sport that they might not have otherwise decided to get involved in.

We may find our next Olympians, but that’s not what it’s about. It’s about helping people get active.

 

Just to clarify for people who may not be familiar with the set-up: although it’s located adjacent to St Brendan’s College, this is Killarney Valley AC’s facility, and St Brendan’s have access to it in the same way that every other school in the vicinity has access to it. Is that accurate?

That is exactly the situation. We would like to see a relationship evolve between the schools over time so that everyone will have a fair shot at using it, and it won’t be St Brendan’s using it 100% of the time.

One thing we can’t facilitate, though, is just leaving the gate open – that would never work. Everything that happens there will be on a managed basis, but there will be plenty of community-based stuff going on in there.

People can also join the club and not be a competitive athlete, and we’ll be able to put on training for these people too. We’ll be deciding on a membership fee shortly and an announcement will be made.

We will also be doing things like Couch to 5Ks for people in the local community who just want to get active. Keep an eye on our social media for updates on that.

 

Great stuff, Tomás. Congratulations again, and all the best with the new facility.

Thank you, Adam.

 

 

Related Topics:
Advertisement

Sport

Lakers aiming to secure first win at home to Malahide

Published

16 hours ago

on

17 October 2025

By

The Utility Trust St Paul’s Lakers will be hoping for a turn of fortunes this weekend after suffering a defeat in Week 2 of the 2025/26 National League season.

The club’s men’s team came up short in Jordanstown against the University of Ulster (91-70) having trailed by just four points heading into the final quarter. There were some positives – mainly the form of Steve Kelly, Sam Grant and Mark Sheehan – but head coach Luke O’Hea will be eager to pick up his first win of the Division 1 campaign at home to Malahide on Saturday. Tip-off at Killarney Sports and Leisure Centre is at 7.30pm.

Malahide have also lost both of their opening two matches, to Drogheda and Portlaoise.

Meanwhile, James Fleming’s women’s team maintained their 100% Super League record by beating the Panthers in Portlaoise on a scoreline of 62-72. The Killarney girls raced into an early lead but they had to weather a storm in the second half as the Panthers rallied admirably.

Maisie Burnham led the St Paul’s charge early doors with Lovisa Hevinder, Lorraine Scanlon and Leah McMahon making important contributions as the game wore on, but it was Tara Cousins who really made her mark in the fourth quarter, racking up 16 crucial points. Each one was significant as Paul’s tried to keep the Panthers at bay – in fact, the American guard registered her team’s final 10 points of the game to help secure a hard-fought 10-point victory.

“It was a good win on the road,” Hevinder told club PRO Enda Walshe. “Portlaoise is always a tough place to play and a difficult team to play against. I think we did a great job defensively, and at times we had really good flow on offence.”

Like their male counterparts, the St Paul’s women have a home game at Killarney Sports and Leisure Centre tomorrow. They host Munster rivals Fr Mathews with the tie tipping off at 4pm. Mathews are seeking their first win of the season.

Attachments

Continue Reading

News

Killarney Athletic stalwart Donie does it for the love of the game

Published

24 hours ago

on

17 October 2025

By

Ahead of Killarney Athletic’s 60th anniversary, Adam Moynihan spoke to club stalwart and current chairman Donie Murphy about his passion for soccer (and the Blues)

Donie, Athletic have a big milestone coming up. Sixty years in existence. How and when did you first come to be involved with the club?

I joined the club in the 1974/75 season as an 18-year-old, so I have 50 years done. People think I didn’t play with anyone else but I joined from Woodlawn Rovers, which was a team made up of a group of friends who used to play down in Billy Doyle’s place at the back of Woodlawn. When that team disbanded, 90% of the boys joined Killarney Athletic. The rest is history, as they say. I didn’t move anywhere else after that.

What sort of footballer were you?

I would consider myself a whole-hearted player. I had a bit of pace. Not an awful lot of skill, but good in the air. I was committed and I expected much the same from everybody else. I played centre back all my career except for one game when I was coming back from injury and I was thrown up centre forward for the B team.

And? How did it go?

One game, one goal [laughs]. I had a 100% record.

Who were some of Athletic’s best players that you lined out with?

You had the likes of Brian McCarthy Senior, Denny Hayes, Pat Moynihan, Connie Doc, Pat Shea… You could throw Mikey Sullivan in there as well. He was a whole-hearted player.

What was the highlight of your playing career?

Well, we were runners-up and beaten finalists in a lot of things, but the one thing we did win was the Munster Junior Cup Kerry Area. It was a big thing at the time. We beat Tralee United 1-0. On the other end of the scale we had a relegation battle over in Castleisland. We had to win and we did, 1-0. We were mean enough in defence. Other than that, I played with the Kerry District League in the Oscar Traynor Cup for a couple of seasons, which was nice as well.

When did you hang up the boots?
I stopped playing with Athletic in 1990. But, of course, there was the Killarney Athletic 7-a-side then as well and I played in the over 35s for a few years after that.

You must have fond memories of the 7-a-side, going all the way back to the start in 1976?

The memories are great. Well, for the first tournament in 1976, Brian McCarthy refereed all the games and I was his sidekick. So I didn’t play, I was running the show while he was reffing. But I played with Killarney Hardware for many years alongside Connie Doc, Pat Shea, Seánie Shea… And DD Mulcahy and Dan Leary from Rathmore.

It would have been staged in the Áras Phádraig at the time. What was that like, for those who weren’t around back then?

Ah, it was unbelievable. We had 74 teams one year with every game being played on the one pitch. So it went on for nearly three months of the summer, because it had to. Everyone who was there saw every game. It is handier in Woodlawn, it takes half the time, but up in the Áras, you could see everything. You couldn’t replicate that atmosphere anywhere else. It was like a cauldron.

When did you first coach an underage team? Do you know how many teams you have trained down through the years?

I couldn’t tell you how many but I’ve been involved with a team every year since I started. I took a Community Games team in 1976 and I did that for a few years. And after that it was Killarney Athletic underage teams. I’m not training a team now but I am involved with the U5s and U6s. Now that is tough going [laughs].

So you’re coming up on 50 years of coaching underage teams? That’s a lot of players…

It’s a lot of players, and it’s a lot of names and faces to remember. Christmas in Killarney is a disaster. There are so many fellas away and they come back for Christmas and they’re saying, “Hey, Donie, how’re things?” I probably didn’t change a lot in the last 30 years, but they did!

What’s your coaching philosophy?

My philosophy is that communication is very important. Everybody should have a voice. I don’t like talking down to anybody. Once I can communicate my ideas to the kids and they buy into it, that’s the big thing. It’s fine going down training and doing the drills but sometimes they just need to be spoken to.

What is it about working with kids that you enjoy?

First of all, it’s the love of the game. But I do prefer to take – I won’t say underdogs – but maybe a B team, and see can I get them better than what they were. Rather than taking a team of stars who are going to be pretty good anyway, I like to bring on the next category of players. That’s what I measure myself against. Within a season, are we better against an opponent in the reverse fixture than we were the first time we played them? I like to see players that are maybe ‘middle of the road’ improving.

Do you find the kids easy or difficult to manage? Do many of them have long-term aspirations of playing professional football?

In general I’ve always found the kids to be great. Boys and girls. I think the girls listen a bit more than the boys [laughs]. Diarmuid O’Carroll and Brendan Moloney have shown that it is possible to go pro. And now Luke Doolan is with Kerry FC. He’s a man who might make it, and he came all the way up along through the ranks. So it is possible.

Do you watch a lot of soccer in your free time?

I do. My wife (Marie) will probably tell me I watch too much soccer. I’m an avid Spurs fan. But I do like to watch other sports as well to switch off.

How would you describe Killarney Athletic’s rivalry with Killarney Celtic?

In the early days it used to be a kind of friendly rivalry. But I think it’s more than friendship now! I would say it’s fierce. We both have so many teams, we’re playing each other at some age grade nearly every single weekend. You always want to win those games. But even going back to my playing days, if you never won another game, the Celtic game was the one you wanted to win. You have to win the derby game for bragging rights. Unfortunately they’ve have had a little bit more bragging rights than us lately but, you know yourself, the wheel might turn, hopefully.

How different is the soccer scene in Kerry today compared to when you first became involved?

There’s no comparison, really. It’s the pitches and the facilities that are the big thing. When I started playing, it was below in the Half Moon field (near Killarney House). It was a case of: jump the wall, put up the goals, line the pitch, play the game, take down the goals… Everything had to be put away. No dressing rooms or anything like that. But now with the facilities we have at the moment, if you haven’t everything in order for them, they’re not happy [laughs].

But the facilities and the all-weather training pitch help the club grow. We have a lot more teams now, going all down the ages, and obviously there’s a lot more coaching going on as well. The kids get into a system of playing, which is good.

Looking back over all your time at the club, what are your fondest Killarney Athletic memories?

For me it’s the people and the players you meet, and the friends you make. My involvement with Athletic has given me lifelong friends. That’s the best thing about it.

You must be looking forward to the club’s 60th celebration dinner?

I am. It’s a big night for the club and it’s a great opportunity to catch up with people you might not have met for a while. There will definitely be a bit of nostalgia. It’s also a great way for people to support the club. We’re developing a new pitch on a piece of land adjacent to our current pitch, so a percentage of ticket sales is going towards that project. Our 50th was a big celebration and a lot of things have happened since then. We have doubled in size membership-wise and girls now make up around 33% of the club. We’re hoping to go from strength to strength.

And, sadly, some of our club members have passed away since the last anniversary so they’ll be remembered on the night as well.

What are your hopes for the future of Killarney Athletic?

There are a lot of great people volunteering in the club so I don’t have any worries about the future. They will take the club onto the next level. Of course I hope we continue to win trophies, but most of all I hope the people involved, be they players or coaches or officers, will enjoy the experience. Everything else will follow after that.

The Killarney Athletic 60th Celebration Dinner takes place in the Gleneagle Hotel Ballroom on Friday, November 14 at 6.30pm. Tickets available via Audrey (087 4585697), Lisa (087 9365322) and Rose (087 6765064).

They can also be purchased from Colette at the Dromhall Hotel, Brian James, O’Neills and the Blackthorn.

Attachments

Continue Reading