Derry's
Devine Inspiration
April 15, 2004.
|
Derry
City FC may be finding it difficult on the field at this moment,
but as youth development officer Declan Devine explained to Children’s
Express reporters Emmet Barr, 14, Lauren O’Donnell, 16, and
Connor McGoldrick, 12, a lot is being done off the field to ensure
the club remains strong for younger players and fans across the
city. |
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As
part of their work they try to provide different opportunities for the
young people of the area to take part in football coaching and games.
“We have over 140 kids coming here every Saturday morning to play
mini soccer, hich is basically short games played in a child friendly
environment where there is no aspect of winning or losing, that’s
really for under 13-year olds where they’re just given a facility
to play at the football club.”
“The football in the community is a huge aspect of the job, it’s
where we go out into the community and try and tie up social needs for
different areas and work on what parts of the community need a little
bit of help. For instance we have developed a programme for fifty teenagers
to go through football qualifications. These are young people who aren’t
working or aren’t doing anything at the moment, that have qualified
to get football qualifications that potentially could get them into jobs
in the near future.”
The programme has helped many young people from many areas and communities
surrounding the Brandywell. “We have worked with over 1000 kids
per week in the Brandywell, Bogside and Fountain areas, and all this coaching
is free for them. In some areas of the town they wouldn’t be able
to afford to pay for football coaching, so we have got the funding to
go and deliver it free. We’ve also given a lot of community groups
football equipment so that they can deliver programmes.”
For the first time in the club’s history there are now three under
age teams operating within the centre of excellence facility. “We’ve
got under twelves, under fourteens, under sixteens, and also the academy
teams, which consist of the best players in the town now representing
Derry City football club. For the first time again in the history we’ve
started up a ladies team, so we’ve covered quite a bit of work over
the last year.”
As well as forming football stars of the future the club are also trying
to encourage a new younger fanbase. “What we’re trying to
do in our job as well is to try to find a new breed of supporters, instead
of having the young kids in the town growing up to travel to Manchester
United or Liverpool or Arsenal on a weekly basis, we’re hoping to
attract them here, in that from the ages of 5 to 16 they have an affinity
with the club and they feel part of the club and in years to come we can
add to the support. Not every player that comes to us is going to become
a footballer, but hopefully every player that comes to us will be a supporter.”
As Declan says although the club has gone through a rough patch much work
has been done to ensure the club has a bright future. “The last
couple of years has been difficult in the fact that the team has struggled
and they’ve been at the bottom half of the table, but that’s
mainly due to the fact that the club was trying to do things right. They’re
not living and spending money that they don’t have, they were very
close to going to the wall and not existing a few years ago, and that’s
something that the board of directors have had to work hard towards making
sure that doesn’t happen again.”
There has been another positive side to this also. “Over the last
number of years the club hasn’t been able to go out and sign big
name players because the money hasn’t been there, but I think we’ve
had a lot of local players play in the first team over the last couple
of years, which has only helped the level of football in the Northwest.”
A lot of work is also been done to improve cross community links across
the city. “We have had a lot of dealings with kids in the Fountain,
we’ve a good relationship with Institute football club and we tend
to play a lot of games against each other. We encourage players from different
backgrounds to come to the club and feel comfortable. We have both Catholic
and Protestant players, we don’t care what religion or what colour
or what race you are, as long as you want to be associated with Derry
City FC, that’s all that we’re trying to get across to the
people in the community.”
Declan is confident that the club has a hopeful future, but would love
to see more involvement from more young people across the city. “I
would like to see much more involvement from the community, to see them
get involved in programmes that we’re delivering, I would also like
to see us having successful teams and making sure that there’s a
facility here for all the kids in the city to work with us.
About
the team
This story was produced by Emmet Barr, 14, Lauren O’Donnell, 16,
and Connor McGoldrick, 12. It was published by The Derry News. April 15,
2004
