With the celebrations set to spill over into the Christmas period, Mullinalaghta’s Patrick Matthews admits that the feasibility of being a small club ‘on the edge of Longford’ doesn’t bode well for the future.
Unprecedented for any number of reasons, Mullinalaghta’s club secretary Patrick Matthews is nevertheless concerned that Sunday’s Leinster club final win may set an unsustainable benchmark for the small Longford club.
Widely played upon in the built up to their clash with Dublin’s Kilmacud Crokes, with their population resting somewhere in the hundreds, Mullinalaghta are limited to a relatively shallow panel of senior players.
Dwarfed in comparisons drawn between them and their Dublin counterpart, Matthews rooted Sunday’s success in the current crop of players at Mullinalaghta’s disposal. Reluctant to play up the ‘David v Goliath’ narrative, Matthews recognised the rare depth this Longford club currently possesses.
“We’re exceptionally fortunate in that we have a group of very good, very talented players,” Matthews explained on this morning’s OTB AM.
“We currently have eight players on the Longford county panel, and had five starters last year in the Leinster semi-final against Dublin.
“You have a very talented cohort of players there, and we’ve been exceptionally lucky to have those played for the last nine or ten years.”
Crediting Cavan-bound manager Mickey Graham with bringing the spark required to instigate Mullinalaghta’s recent rise, Matthews remains concerned that the club will soon face more substantial problems than even Kerry’s Dr Crokes in an All-Ireland semi-final.
With the club’s already limited pool of players available diminishing further still, a sheer lack of numbers could soon prove devastating for Mullinalaghta long-term future.
“Football down here has always been very, very strong,” Matthews stated.
“[But] we’re a very small community. We have a church, a national school and a pub left at this stage.
“We’re on the edge of Longford and not really on the thoroughfare to anywhere ... and what you have to do you have to do for yourselves, because nobody else is going to do it for you.
“Realistically, we have about 40 [children] in the national school, and only about one-third of those are boys. So, I think in five, ten, fifteen years down the road, we’re going to be struggling to field teams.
“The other three clubs in Longford with similar populations to ourselves have all gone under in the last couple of years.
“Certainly you’d be worried in the longer-term about numbers, but for the time being we’ll take what we have and go with it.”
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