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John O Shea will visit Lucan United Fc this sunday at 12pm for coaching sessions with our 8s 9s and 10s. We would like to thank John, McDonalds and the FAI for their support. All members are welcome on the day.
LUCAN United enjoyed a day to remember last Sunday as Republic of Ireland defender John O’Shea visited Airlie Heights as the club won a FAI Future Football Coaching session with the former Manchester United defender.
Lucan member Kate Kennedy won the session for her club as part of a recent competition and the club availed of the programme to provide a fun and friendly environment for players at grassroots level to develop their skills.
It continues the feel-good factor around the club with club chairman John Doyle telling GazetteSport that membership has just passed 500 while, during the summer, Lucan created a new record with seven players lining out for the Republic of Ireland Under-16 team.
With the club’s home thronged from 11am until 2pm with players and coaches receiving top level tips, Doyle said it was a day that will live with the club’s members.
“The big thing about bringing in someone like John O’Shea is it gets kids enthusiastic about football. You hear of so many dropping out from football for different reasons.
“You are really trying to encourage kids to keep coming up; we haven’t seen it so much but you do hear from the FAI that the drop-out is high.
“When international players come to your club, it spurs people on. It also spurs on the volunteers; they make the club, the ones out there every week on the sidelines, maybe getting some grief from parents, doing it all voluntary.
“Every year, we have two or three new managers coming on board – when you do that, you can be committing yourself for the next 10 or 12 years because you bring all the way through.”
The initiative is supported by McDonald’s who are also the sponsor of the rapidly growing girls section of the club, landing numerous titles last season.
More boys teams have also been added this year, making for exciting times for the club.
“McDonald’s put a lot of money into our girls section of the club so we are delighted with that,” Doyle said. “We are up to 500 members, have 33 teams; so we are really happy with the way things are going. There are teams at the competitive end and at the recreational end and both are flying.
“We’ve got five Under-10 teams, three Under-9s, three Under-8s, four Under-11s – so the young ones are all coming through and we have a great academy with UEFA coaches. A lot of clubs might not necessarily have their best coaches at that level but we believe kids pick up so much and it stays with them. It’s gone really well.”
