Craughwell AC looks to future with building plan

If you look at the local athletics news, Craughwell AC features prominently in a variety of disciplines most weeks – from walking to middle distance running to the high jump. It’s a club on the move. A club without limitations. A club with ambitions.

Now, the driving forces behind their success story – it is by far the biggest juvenile club in the county and Connacht and is the second biggest in the country behind Dundrum South Dublin – hope to take Craughwell AC to the next level by pursuing an audacious building programme.

With the purchase of an eight-acre site being processed at present, the club, which is based out of Craughwell Community Sports Group’s grounds adjacent to Craughwell NS and the GAA’s training pitches and ball wall, expect to begin development of its additional facilities this Summer.

On this day, Club Chairperson Mark Gillen and PRO Michael Tobin, the latter of whom, in many respects, is the rock the successful juvenile club has been built on, sit down with Talking Sport to outline their plans. Initially, they say, the field will have to be prepared with fencing, access points and lighting but further work should quickly follow.

This includes developing another long jump area, incorporating pole vault, a high jump area, a grass sprinting area and an 800m grass loop. “There is a one and a half metre track inside that which would be gravel,” explains Tobin.

“The idea of that is that you can walk on it or if the weather is pretty bad for running you could step in off the grass if you want to go on the gravel path.”

By 2017, they anticipate work to have started on an indoor building – again incorporating high jump, long jump and pole vault, along with an indoor throwing area, sprint lanes and 200m two-lane tartan track.

This building, which will be done in two phases, would be completed by 2022, with a community gymnasium, changing rooms and toilets, physio rooms and aerobics room finishing the ambitious venture.

They aim to add a 400m IAAF outdoor track by 2030, which, they hope, will be financed by income generated through the use of their building.

“That is the eventual plan,” remarks Tobin before referring back to a sketch (see right) which outlines the first phase of the development with the shadow of the planned building superimposed.

With this drawing, Tobin and Gillen are anxious people realise this will take time, patience and, of course, money. “We don’t want people to come back and say ‘where is the building?’” he explains, “that ‘ye collected all this money but where is the building!’.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.