€214,000 land purchase paves way for badly needed development for Offaly GAA club

A FEW years of negotiations and difficult hurdles having to be surmounted have finally reached fruition for Raheen GAA Club with the purchase of 14.5 acres of prime land just outside Cloneygowan Village.

The location of an ancient fairy ring on the land was one of the big issues that had to be dealt with before Raheen could go through with the €214,000 purchase. That remnants of an ancient ring fort, possibly thousands of years old, can't be touched, meaning that a few square metres of their new land will have to be cordoned off from development.

It means that the club can only provide one full sized playing pitch and a full sized astro turf facility at their new grounds – they may have been able to do two full sized playing pitches without the ring fort but the opportunity to get the land was one that just could not be turned down. They also plan to construct a new football wall.

Not only that but Raheen GAA also had to engage the service of an archaeologist to examine the full site and make sure that nothing else was going to crop up when they got diggers and machines in that would stop development work from going ahead.

Once all those obstacles were cleared, Raheen GAA Club were able to proceed with the purchase and there is a palpable mood of excitement among officers about what this means to the club. The need to acquire extra land has become increasingly urgent in recent years as playing numbers rose and the demands on their sole playing pitch in Geashill reached levels that just could not be satisfied.

Raheen have a couple of adult football teams themselves and them and Ballinagar are the overseers of the Na Fianna Minor Football Club, looking after all their underage football sides. They also provided training facilities occasionally for Naomh Molaoise Ladies Football Club (a club that has catered for ladies football over a wide area including Daingean and Killeigh parishes) when the pitch was available – Underage ladies football teams are now being provided under the Na Fianna banner and this will lead to the introduction of Na Fianna adult teams once they reach adult level.

With full integration of ladies football and camogie into the GAA expected to happen in the next couple of years, Raheen and Ballinagar would have been unable to meet the demand from all stakeholders when ladies football and underage were included.

Ballinagar have also purchased new land recently behind their pitch and are currently examining the feasibility of either an astro turf pitch or a full playing one.

As Raheen chairman Pauric Pierce explained on Sunday, Raheen have often found themselves in difficulty with matches fixed in Geashill and training of some teams not able to be fitted in there for a couple of weeks as a result. “The amount of activity on the Geashill pitch is huge and if there is a game fixed for it, there are four or five teams who can't train that evening. It could lead to circumstances where a team couldn't train for two weeks. We had no space. It is inadequate and with the ladies coming on board now with Na Fianna girls, it is unreal.”

They are very grateful to the land owners, Thomas and Sandra Brennan for selling them the land. The couple approached Raheen GAA about the land and were determined that they would get it, even though they could have got a higher price from interested farmers in the locality. The Brennan's are a long established and big Cloneygowan farming family with Thomas' late parents farming there for years – Thomas and Sandra bought it when it went up for auction after their death.

They sold the house there and are living in Dublin but retained the farm and aware that Raheen GAA were seeking land, they started negotiations a few years ago. Raheen agreed at an AGM two years ago to do everything they could to secure the land and now it has been achieved with the paper work being finalised just three weeks ago.

The club are very happy that a fair price of just over €14,750 an acre was paid for the land – 10 acres nearby went for €250,000 recently. “Fair play to Thomas. He was offered more money by farmers around the place but he said no,” smiled the chairman, who is also thankful to a great local GAA stalwart Matthew Byrne for the role in paid in bringing it all to fruition.

Raheen had been looking for land for a few years now. Land beside their current playing pitch on the Tullamore road outside of Geashill would have been ideal but wasn't available there. Another field near the shop further up the road at the village would also have been perfect but is zoned for residential and was outside their reach as a result of that while there was nothing else available in the village area.

Mr Pierce pointed out that a committee was set up over 10 years ago in Geashill to get half an acre to an acre to build a playground for children and it took them ten years to bring their project to fruition.

The plans for the Cloneygowan land, which is located between the Railway bridge and the village, are proposed ones at the moment and could change in time but an important part of their ambitions is to build a community centre in the development. This will include dressing rooms but they also want to provide a much needed facility that can be used by other groups in the area – Raheen church is just a mile or so from the land and there is no community centre in either Cloneygowan or Geashill to cater for refreshments after funerals and the many other events that one could be used for.

A portion of the new land up against Cloneygowan village is split from the main acreage by a field that is zoned for residential but there is a 200 metre plus strip along the railway line that will provide an access point between the two – and a final decision will be made later on whether to have the community centre and dressing rooms here or at the main segment.

The Cloneygowan location of the land ticks boxes for many in the Raheen club: Raheen replaced the old St Mary's club when formed in 1973 and it was named for the Raheen townland as a compromise between the two villages of Cloneygowan and Geashill – Raheen is half way between the two. There were both Geashill and Cloneygowan clubs in existence for several years in the early decades of the 20th century, with Geashill winning a handful of senior football titles in the first decade of the 1900s. St Mary's replaced them and had a great run for years, winning the Senior Football Championship in 1947 and 1950 and combining with Gracefield to win as St Patrick's in 1959.

With the GAA growing in strength, there is a great drive for development among GAA clubs across Offaly in recent years. Acquiring new land has become a major priority for many and Shamrocks, Daingean, Rhode and Ballinagar are among the many who have purchased ground in the past decade – Shamrocks acquired new land at Killina in the 2010s and recently announced a major €1 million development programme, with that land being developed after projects in Mucklagh and Rahan.

“It all depends on finance,” Mr Pierce said, stating that they haven't got prices for developing the land yet. The club had €100,000 of their own money to fund the purchase, they got a €100,000 loan from Croke Park and a bank loan of €50,000.

Above: Raheen GAA members and supporters

They now have to fundraise to clear the Croke Park and bank loans and have launched a quick one that they hope will bring in thousands of euros. Upwards of fifty members will be taking part in an abseil fundraising challenge off the roof of Croke Park on Friday, October 24 and with such ambitious plans in the pipeline, they hope this will galvanise the wider parish and further afield – one of Raheen's great footballers, John Guinan, an All-Ireland senior football medal winner with Offaly in 1982, will be among the people leaping off the roof in Croke Park.

A powerful online fundraising campaign will be mounted as the participants seek sponsors – they will be availing of the Offaly GAA/Club Faithful finance collecting portal to accept donations and the sky is the limit for some of these fundraisers, if they gain real traction.

Offaly GAA themselves have raised over €100,000 from fundraisers using this and other clubs have raised upwards of €50,000 from similar type of undertakings to the Raheen one and Mr Pierce hopes they will be able to follow this trend and hit in the region of €100,000.

They will be hoping to access sports capital grants and funding from the GAA's Central and Leinster Councils when they finalise their development plans while they will also be seeking financial backing from the Moanvane Wind Farm, located just a few kicks of a football away from them in the Walsh Island catchment area.

Their first priority is to get the land paid for, get an access road in and set up goal posts and prepare a pitch for training for 2026.

With just one playing pitch in Geashill, it could very well lead to Cloneygowan becoming the main club headquarters down the road – this has happened in other places but Pauric Pierce is not looking that far ahead. He is very conscious of the cherished part the Geashill pitch occupies in GAA history in the parish – a tradition that long predates the 1973 formation of Raheen as it was purchased from the Irish Land Commission in the 1930s.

“You never know, it all depends on the people coming up. The next generation will decide that,” Mr Pierce grinned as he passed the buck on that query. “It is very exciting for the club. It is just over fifty years in existence and we are moving ahead. If you are standing still, you are going backways. It is for the future, it is for the kids of the future. It is not for us. Geashill here is burnt out.”

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Raheen vice chairman and manager of their intermediate football team, Niall Carty remarked: “This is a huge undertaking. This is for the future, for all your kids, for your grandchildren. I see clubs are doing these type of developments all over the county. Clubs can't accommodate what is there now, and we have girls coming on board now as well. It is huge, we have Na Fianna footballers and we need that conveyor belt but we need training facilities to facilitate that. Every club is pushing this now and we can't be left behind. We will appreciate all support. We know this is ambitious but it is worth it and hopefully we will have a training facility to be proud of in a few years time. We just want to drive it on and leave a legacy.”

The link to support the Croke Park fundraiser can be accessed on: https://raheengaa.fundmajor.com/