Treaty United want to be a team for the Mid-West

Shannonside’s latest League of Ireland club make their debut next Friday night in the Airtricity League but SHANE BROPHY finds out that they want to be more than a club for Limerick city.

While much of the sporting landscape remains shutdown, the Mid Wests newest club gets set to make its bow next Friday night in the League of Ireland.

Treaty United become the latest club to play out of Limerick in the Airtricity League of Ireland following the demise of Limerick City and Limerick FC in recent years.

With a ladies senior and under 17 team already representing Treaty United over the last twelve months, they provided the template for the men’s team to follow after the club was granted a League of Ireland licence last month.

One of those central to the formation of Treaty United is former Ballymackey and Nenagh AFC coach Dave Rooney who was ladies senior manager last season and has now moved onto join the men’s set-up as assistant manager to manager Tommie Barrett.

However, he was keen to stress that this new club which will play out of the Market’s Field in Limerick city is not Limerick’s team, it’s the Mid-Wests team.

“It is about Mid-West, not Limerick. That’s why it is Treaty United,” Rooney stressed.

“It’s a mid-West team and we have players from all over Limerick, Tipperary, Clare, North Kerry and a few players from North Cork and South Galway coming into us.”

For the last twelve months, Limerick was without a League of Ireland team after Limerick FC went into liquidation while Treaty United were unsuccessful in putting a team together for that campaign due to legal challenges from the owner of Limerick FC.

However, unlike the city’s previous incarnation, Treaty United is fan led, much like the route Cork City and more recently Bohemians have gone down the road to great success.

“Bohs were my team in Dublin so I would have looked at them and known people within Bohs and the stuff they do in the community is incredible,” Rooney said.

“Through a few contacts there we are trying to implement them in Limerick and Treaty United have bought into it in terms of putting together community schemes, coaching in schools when Covid finishes.

“But you can see by the stuff the club do on social media they are looking to involve the fans and local businesses. They involved a membership scheme last week and got phenomenal interest in it so people are buying into it as people can see that the previous owners of Limerick FC were looking to make money out of the club by signing players and build them up to sell them on at a profit; this is the last thing on Treaty United minds, we are looking to build a club that is sustainable so every single penny that comes into the club stays within the club.”

Senior soccer in Limerick has seen many false dawns in recent decades since the 1970’s and 1980’s when they were one of the powerhouses of Irish soccer. However, since then success has been thin on the ground with much of their existence being in the first division, and while Treaty United would like to achieve success as soon as they can, it is not their focus at the moment.

“The problem with football in general is everybody seems to think short term,” Dave Rooney added.

“People in Limerick have seen false dawns where people have come in and thrown money at it but that isn’t sustainable. People are buying into it now and saying, look, we are not looking for short term success immediately, but if this is done properly there will be a club here for the long term.

“There will be a time when the club will have to make a decision about going at winning trophies and paying players. We are just an amateur club, a glorified junior club to be completely honest, but there will be a time when we’ll have to play players and put in wage structures but there are shrewd people involved here and when that time comes all the decisions will be made in the best interests of the club, and not to put the club in jeopardy just to win a trophy which is what has killed teams in Limerick in the past.”

Being a Mid-West club, Treaty United are focused on having players from the region in their squads and the short timeframe from where they were given their League of Ireland first division licence last month has meant going with what they know for the first half of the season until the transfer window in June, including former Nenagh Celtic player Mark Walsh.

“It was a nightmare, Rooney explains. “The FAI awarded us a licence on the Saturday morning, but we could not sign an amateur player after the following Thursday at five o’clock, so we basically had four days and one training session to put a squad together.

“A lot of it came from players we knew in the region. I would have brought Mark Walsh in. I would know Mark for years. I tried to sign him for Nenagh AFC but in fairness to him he is a Nenagh Celtic boy. The manager Tommie Barrett would have played with Mark Walsh ten years ago in Athlone, so he knew Mark well as well.”

Templemore’s Sean Paddy Guerins, who played previously for Cork City and Athlone Town is also a part of the squad as is Tipperary Town’s Willie Armshaw and Matthew McKevitt from Thurles.

Treaty United get their season underway with a trip to Bray Wanderers this Sunday with a squad still trying to gel together, but one that should be extremely competitive and of a high standard with the continued shutdown of junior soccer benefitting the fledgling club which Dave Rooney explains.

“There are players in the squad this year that we would have tried to sign for Limerick FC two years ago, but they were basically happy playing junior football, not having to travel all over the country on a Friday night.

“These players now, because they have no football, were ringing us as soon as we got the licence, saying they were available and want to play and give it a go. Because there is no junior football these lads are just mad to play football.”

Hopefully when the Coronavirus restrictions have passed, Treaty United can progress to the next stage of their development which is creating strong links with clubs in Tipperary, Clare, Cork, Kerry, and of course Limerick, just as they had been doing with the ladies’ side of the club prior to lockdown.

“When we started with the girls last year, we would have had links with Lough Derg FC who were mascots at some games. Killavilla United have a few players in with the girl’s teams so we made it a thing at our home games to invite the local girls in and play on the pitch at half time and become mascots, flag-bearers,” Rooney said.

“We will be looking to do exactly the same thing with the boys once it is safe to do so. It won’t just be about Limerick; it will be linking in with the clubs in the region. We want to link in with those clubs and build some kind of a feeder system where clubs can feed into us, but players don’t just come in at one end, when they are finished with us it is important they go back to the clubs they came from, so it is important for us to build partnerships with clubs, not only for their players but also their supporters.

“It was a massive thing for us when we started was to get the clubs on board. All the Limerick teams that have been there over the years, I don’t think the junior or schoolboys’ clubs have really got on board with it, we are really looking to build links with them this year and bring everyone together and make Treaty United a team for the Mid-West that everyone can aspire to play for, whether it is boys or girls at all levels.”