New Ladies Gaelic Football club for Ballina
By Thomas Conway
It might seem like a lofty aspiration, but if the newly evolving Ballina Ladies Football Club ever reaches the heights hit by Mourneabbey LGFC, the recently crowned All-Ireland Senior club champions, the success will almost certainly be branded as a sporting fairytale, one of these impossible feats, the likes of which only Mullinalaghta could achieve.
And yet, were you to call down to Ballina GAA pitch any recent Saturday or Sunday, you would have seen a group of girls training with the type of enthusiasm which brings All-Ireland success, but more importantly, sheer enjoyment.
Ladies Football is thriving across Ireland at present, almost inexorably so, boasting a network of over a thousand clubs, and consistently smashing attendance records at All-Ireland Finals, with 50,141 spectators witnessing Dublin triumph in this year’s decider. A number of factors have combined as the driving force behind this surge, including a vital commercial partnership with the supermarket franchise Lidl, who also know what it feels like to explode in popularity.
Still though, nothing will catch fire if you don’t have that spark of enthusiasm to set it alight. Both Aidan Coyne and Kevin Byrnes noticed that spark amongst their own daughters, and indeed the wider generation of youngsters in the area.
In actual fact, it was more a case of them being made notice it, following persistent attempts from the girls, many of whom had already been playing with the only club in the region Silvermines, to establish a club of their own.
An attempt had been made two years ago which didn’t quite work out and even prior to that, previous Ballina teams had competed at Community Games level. There’s more to it this time though – the fervour is more intense, and it’s also infectious.
“The girls drove the whole thing themselves actually,” admitted Aidan Coyne.
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