Massive boost for hockey with Mountain South plan

The planned Centre of Excellence at Mountain South in Athenry was apparently officially launched this week, with representatives of both Galway United and Connacht Hockey in attendance, along with Luke Comer of the Comer Group, one of the two billionaire brothers from Glenamaddy who own the Comer Group.

The details of the multi-million euro sporting complex were exclusively revealed in Tribune Sport last week, including the plans for a fully-enclosed soccer dome including changing rooms and seating facilities; a single two-storey sports centre including dressing rooms, gym, canteens, meeting rooms, offices, toilets, storage areas and ancillary rooms; and a number of pitches, both of the natural grass and astro-turf variety.

All the talk has been that the Comer Group were to develop a training base for Galway United, but as revealed on these pages earlier this month, Connacht Hockey have been brought on board as part of the development, with last week’s planning notice stating that “the project is a joint junction between Galway United Football Club and the Connacht Hockey Association”, and that the development “is to create modern training facilities for both associations”.

While United have been crying out for their own training base – the League of Ireland club has spent its entire existence renting training facilities, often moving from one club to another – hockey in the West of Ireland has also been seriously hampered by a lack of facilities.

The inclusion of hockey as a co-anchor of the proposed development is both a massive boon to the sport, and also to the prospects of the development being granted planning permission, and when you add in the fact that the proposal also includes tennis and volleyball courts amongst other things, its multi-sport look should make it a more attractive development to planners in the local authority.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App

Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.

Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.

Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite  HERE.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.