By John Harrington
On the night of September 23, 2018, a mine collapsed below Magheracloone’s club-grounds which result in a sink-hole that left the pitch looking like it had been torn open by an earthquake.
By the following day further subsidence split the wall of the clubhouse itself and the local school and five nearby houses had to be evacuated.
Such was the scale of the devastation it was immediately apparent the Monaghan club would never be able to use their club grounds again.
It’s a testament to both the tenacity of the club’s members and the generosity of neighbouring clubs that they managed to survive what was nothing short of a natural disaster.
For almost four years they played their home games on a variety of pitches in four different counties – Monaghan, Cavan, Meath and Louth – to prevent the club effectively going out of existence.
That extraordinary logistical challenge is now finally over, because on Saturday evening the Magheracloone Intermediate footballers played their first match in the club’s new pitch which is located just half a mile away from their old grounds.
Magheracloone's newly opened Prunty pitch.
They lost to Doohamlet by a point, but the result in no way tempered the mixture of relief and pride every member in the club felt at finally having a home to call their own again.
“Thrilled is not the word,” says club Chairperson, Francis Jones, who was one of the first people on the scene when news broke of the sink-hole that destroyed their old club-grounds.
“Just thrilled and relieved to have a pitch up and running. We're open for business again, we have a base we can go to again for our home matches.
"We were travelling here, there and everywhere borrowing pitches all over the place in Monaghan, Cavan, Meath, and Louth. You were looking at the fixture list when it was coming to plan where you might be able to play each match.
"At least now we have a home pitch and we can organise the match ourselves and we're not longer having to rely on the good will of other clubs to sort us out.
“It's just a half of a mile further down the same road. It's in close proximity to the old pitch but this is on safe ground.
“There was a great energy about the place on Saturday evening. The previous Monday night we opened up the pitch to all our members to come in and have a look around and kick a bit of ball on the field. There was a great spirit and a pep in everyone's step to get back in and get the field open. It put a really good feeling into the community.”
An aerial view of the damage caused when a mine collapsed under Magheracloone Mitchells GAA Club's grounds.
During the four years the went without the pitch, Magheracloone got by thanks to a mixture of the generosity of others and their own initiative.
Two fields were leased off local formers and transformed into a training ground complete with dressing-rooms and lights which took a lot of organisation.
And they were fortunate too that their neighbouring clubs in Monaghan, Cavan, Louth, and Meath were generous enough to donate their own pitches when the schedule allowed.
“Only for those training pitches we definitely wouldn't have survived,” says Jones. “They were a God-send to us. We're still using them and will continue to use them. We can use them for training and also play up to U-13 matches there.
“We're no different than any other club in the country in so far as we have our rivalries when the games are on. But when we lost our ground and were in need of help, the clubs all around us all gave us all the help they could and we'll always be indebted to them for that.
“We border Cavan, Meath, and Louth and clubs from all of those counties helped us out as much as the clubs in our own county which we're hugely thankful for.”
The Magheracloone U-19 county championship winning team.
The state of the art pitch Magheracloone have just opened is only the beginning of what will eventually be a superb new club-grounds. In the face of adversity, they’ve responded with ambition.
“We have a proposal for a fully complete facility but we've split it into Phase One and Phase Two with the idea of just getting a pitch up and running as quickly as we could," says Jones. "So we now have a full size Prunty pitch, home and away and referee's dressing-rooms, a shop, and toilet facilities.
“In Phase Two we'll hopefully install two more pitches and an astro-turf pitch as well with a stand and a function room and a sports hall. It'll be a fantastic facility when it's completed and Phase 2 will probably take three years, but at the minute we're just grateful to have what we have.
“It's four years ago next month since the subsidence happened, but really the construction took 18 months from when we got planning which isn't too bad considering it's a Prunty pitch.
“We've a good executive and a good development committee in the club who have worked hard to pull the whole thing together.
“Just because we'll be building good facilities doesn't mean we can take our eye of the most important thing, working with the juveniles. That can't stop because if you take your eye off the ball there it'll be a long time before you recover.
“Thankfully we have good members and good coaches and we're all working hard for the club.”
The fact that Magheracloone have already won county U-19 and U-13 titles this year suggests they certainly haven't taken their eye off the ball as far as nuturing the talent of their younger players is concerned.
As a club they're rebuilding impressively on the ruins of disaster, and you get the feeling Magheracloone are only getting started.
