*Denis Hynes. Photograph: Arthur Ellis
NEWMARKET Celtic showcased the highest level of local soccer in Clare, winning the FAI Junior Cup and contesting the Munster Junior Cup final but Clare’s FAI Football Development Officer, Denis Hynes, says that he gets equal satisfaction from seeing more young people than ever get the opportunity to play the sport across the county.
Inclusivity of various communities and the “explosion” of girls’ soccer in the county means that membership levels are increasing year-on-year.
Ennistymon native Denis may not have had a local club growing up in North Clare until he was aged 15, but he tells The Clare Echo that the landscape today is much healthier, “At the moment you have the Clare Schoolboy/girl soccer league which has 21 clubs and about 3,000 players from U6 to U16. On the older side you have the Clare District Soccer league which looks after U17 and adult and they have a playing pool of about 1,500 at the moment, so all in all close to 5,000 active players from U6 to adult.”
Denis came into the FAI role in 2005, part-funded by the Clare soccer leagues and Clare County Council, having previously volunteered with Ennistymon Celtic and then Moher Celtic.
“Initially when I started the role I could look at the map of Clare and there were a lot of areas where we didn’t have an underage section, thankfully now we can look at the county and see schoolboy/girl clubs in every part of the county providing an outlet for the underage.
“Certainly, thinking on the girls’ side. We had Damien Walsh’s Lifford AFC, they were the top club in the country and then there was a period when girls soccer fell away and from 2010 back to now there has been an explosion of underage girls’ soccer. Of the 21 underage clubs, 14-15 of them are providing girls soccer so that’s probably eye-catching increase in player numbers.
“Even over the Easter, we were delivering female focused workshops and coaching sessions for u10 girls. If you tried to deliver that programme 10 years ago, you wouldn’t have clubs to go to… a lot more clubs are giving the girls game the same opportunity as the boys.”
In his role as Clare’s FAI Football Development Officer, Denis co-ordinates the delivery of a number of programmes from coaching, player development, coaching courses to volunteers and teachers, while working in a hands-on capacity with the county squads from U12 to Oscar Traynor (adult) level. Much of his time is also dedicated to improving governance and structures amongst clubs in the county, including the delivery of the club Mark programme, a quality assurance award that goes to a club when they meet certain standards.
Denis, previously a secondary school teacher who also qualified in Sports & Leisure Management from Waterford IT, is now 18 years in the role and one of his most recent notable achievements is the roll-out of winter futsal in the county. It’s a programme that has been so successful that it’s been replicated by the FAI across the country.
“Covid presented a crisis in that teachers weren’t bring kids into the indoor halls, so we developed a futsal in the yard programme, supported by Healthy Clare. It’s an inclusive program to get boys and girls up and running after Covid. It’s a series of resources and sessions and education for teachers on how to deliver PE-oriented sessions on the school yard. That programme started in Clare in 2020 and now it’s gone nationwide through the FAI and is now recognised as part of the active schools programme. It’s just an example of where the Covid crisis, there was an opportunity and thankfully it’s now having a nationwide impact.”
Indoor Futsal is also run during the winter by FAI Clare so that youngsters can continue enjoy kicking a ball and developing their skills in the off-season, “Ourselves and Healthy Clare developed a winter programme, we have futsal programmes across the county indoors in the community centres. Again, that was another opportunity to keep those kids active.
“Futsal is still a hidden secret in Ireland unfortunately. If you were to analyse the top attacking players in world football; the majority of them are Brazilian, South American, Portuguese, Spanish; they were all raised on this game called futsal. The ball has a reduced bounce and its playing style and rules are a mixture of basketball, Olympic handball and soccer. Rather than playing off the walls, you play to sidelines and there’s a kick-in a 5 on the court… As a player development tool, it’s the foundation for most of the world’s top players. We haven’t gotten it to the stage we’d like to in Ireland yet”.
Denis adds that FAI Clare “have a whole raft of community programmes” including a very successful 5-a-side event run every summer in conjunction with the Gardai called Beat the Streets.
“Last year with ran a Down Syndrome camp working with the support of Clare Sports Partnership. We assist programmes with the Brothers of Charity. Football is great to break down barriers. At different times of the year we do different programmes for non-nationals or communities coming into County Clare. The biggest one at the moment is the Ukrainian community. As we say, you don’t have to speak Ukrainian to deal with the Ukrainian community that come in, or the Brazilian or the Portuguese. Throw out a few bibs and put a ball down, it’s a great way to welcome people into the community”.
