Pictures- The Kilkenny Floodlit League celebrates 25th successful season

Another successful season of floodlit soccer came to a close recently with finals in all Floodlit League Cup competitions.

This year the league celebrated its 25th season of night-time soccer in Kilkenny City. It was formed in 2001 when soccer friends Eamon Cleere and Gerry O’Keeffe, who both were involved with their own team in the now defunct Nightowls league, decided that it was time to form their own.

Nightowls which was a commercial venture being run from Cork had leagues all over Ireland and parts of the UK at the time and were even spreading in to parts of Europe. The new soccer league would be run in Kilkenny, by Kilkenny and for Kilkenny.

All games would be played in Kilkenny City and for the first four seasons this was made possible by Kilkenny College Administrator Peter Dukelow, who made the College Astro pitch available to the new Soccer League.

In 2006 the league, which was now growing at a fast rate, needed another Astro pitch and so moved to the newly-laid pitch in Loreto Secondary School Kilkenny. They were later to move from Kilkenny College and have games in Loreto and Scanlon Park.

Over the years teams have come from every corner of the county as well as the city to play in the league. Teams have also come from Carlow and Tipperary.

Initially games were generally for players that had finished playing Sunday soccer and wanted to play in a good well organised competitive league and they certainly got this. However as the years went by more and more younger players wanted to join in as they found that playing games on week nights meant more family time at weekends.

As Eamon Cleere was involved with fundraising at the O’Neill Centre Gerry suggested that any profits from the league would be donated to this organisation.

In the first season €8,000 was donated to the charity. After 25 years €308,000 has been donated to the O’Neill Centre by the soccer players of Kilkenny.

Big winners in this season’s league were Lisdowney team Noreside FC who won the treble of League Championship, Floodlit Cup and also the Plate competition. With Johnstown man Gerry Drennan as manager Noreside had their best season so far.

OS Utd, with joint managers Derek Blanche and Ger Carroll, won the League Cup and Floodlit Shield double. OS, who entered the league in 2015 as the Outsiders, have always been great supporters of the league.

Another great supporter of the league have been Glendine. Jim Kavanagh’s men won the final competition of the season the Dalton Cup.

The league have had great sponsors over the years with John Downey (JD Computers) whose father Con did so much for the game over the years being the first sponsor.

John was followed by family firm C&C Security while Kevin Morrissey and Morrissey Motors sponsored for many years after this.

Kevin also had his own team involved for several seasons and was a regular on the sidelines for all of his team’s games.

Current sponsors are Dalton’s Chancellors Mills. John Dalton previously played for several years with Threecastles side Rock Utd.

All games are refereed by officials from the Kilkenny and Carlow branch of the Irish Soccer Referees Society. The league thanked all referees as well as co-ordinators Pat Conroy and Pat O’Connor for their huge contribution to this.

The league would also like to thank the thousands of players who have participated over the 25 seasons and look to having many more take part in the coming years.

Players, officials and supporters will now take a well earned break to recharge for the 26th season of Floodlit Soccer in Kilkenny which will begin again in October.