THE LAST POINT: ​Illuminating time for the club championships

The evenings are closing in, I’m sorry to say and despite the rays of sunshine on Sunday and Monday that lifted our souls, every day it just is a little bit darker than before, the nights creeping closer. One more sign of the shortening days is that the Friday evening championship games have disappeared off the Observer’s diary over the past few weeks – something I’ve not thought I’d miss but strangely do – and it is all because of illumination, or the lack of it, at the county’s GAA grounds.

​Sometimes I wonder if I’m being overly demanding – club grounds in Leitrim have undergone a remarkable transformation in my years with the Observer. My first game was a Hastings Cup clash in Ballinamore between Leitrim and Cavan, Brendan Guckian, Ray Logan and a few others lining out for PJ Carroll’s team in January 1990 and if you could be transported directly from that day to the present day, I don’t think you’d believe your own eyes!

The dressing rooms were a low flat top building beside the road, a bit of a stand halfway down the pitch and, believe it or not, a small press box over the far side of the pitch – a remarkable feature in those days. Not many club grounds had them and more than a few County pitches didn’t but to see the stand in Pairc Sheain Ui Eslin now, the spacious dressing rooms and training pitch out the back and car park the far side of the ground, you begin to realise just how far facilities have come over the years.

Pairc Sean was no different – step into Heartland Credit Union Pairc Sean Mac Diarmada, as it is officially known nowadays, and you want for nothing. From the shop staffed by the St Mary’s crew just inside the main gate through to the digital scoreboard, the fantastic Prunty playing surface and a stand that boasts some of the best press facilities in the entire country, it is a long way from the former press box, two seats wide on the bottom level, another two seats up above for the radio lads, grass banks and four dressing rooms with sunkened dugouts, a million miles away from what we have now.

You look at the work that has already been done on the pitches in Ballinamore, Pairc Sean, Melvin Gaels, Drumshanbo, Pairc Cil Tiobraid, Fenagh, Gortletteragh, Mohill and Cloone, a carpet last Sunday at the Fresh Today Junior A clash between Cloone and Drumreilly, while Annaduff, Bornacoola and Dromahair are in the midst of relaying their pitches, transforming them in the process and that is only half the story. Drumkeerin’s Pairc Naomh Brid has been transformed with their dressing room and handball complex, Carrigallen, Ballinaglera, Aughavas & Aughawillan have superb facilities alongside their pitches while Glencar Manorhamilton topped the lot, developing an entirely new club grounds with a fantastic pitch and dressing room complex.

None of that was easy and that is why I am a little reluctant to issue a clarion call for more development but with the evenings closing in, match capable floodlights have got to be next on the wish-list for the ambitious club in Leitrim. Quite a few clubs in surrounding counties have match capable floodlights, not the jury-rigged lighting that suffices for training, but quality lights that allows games to take place. First of all, you’ve got to have a pitch that can stand up to the rigors of winter football, good drainage and a solid surface but with the transformation that is going on in the county, that is definitely being taken care of.

By my reckoning, only Cloone and Kiltubrid have match-floodlights and I know from conversations with volunteers in both clubs, turning on the bright lights comes at quite a cost, a cost that only seems to be going up the longer Donald Trump’s adventures in the Strait of Hormuz and Putin’s costly and ruinous adventure in Ukraine continue.

There a lots of reasons floodlights seem like a bad idea – the cost for one is a big stumbling block, whatever about the day to day operational costs; the difference between floodlights, match floodlights and TV floodlights are, to use a pun, night and day if you’ve ever been to a televised night-time game while light pollution and annoyance for those living in the vicinity, be they GAA, rugby or soccer, is another hurdle to be overcome. And there is the almost understandable tendency to over-use pitches boasting floodlights, pitches getting churned up and that’s another challenge for those tasked with ensuring the best possible surface for games.

But the benefits, and I’ll understand if you roll your eyes at this pun, are plain to see! Right now, during the closing stages of the Club Championship, the Saturday evening game in Pairc Sean is back to a 5 pm throw-in – in two or three weeks, it will be four o’clock and when we get the near halloween, the only double header you might fit in will have a 12 noon and 2 pm start. The same applies for a Sunday and with County Final season just around the corner, finding venues and avoiding clashes of games seems almost impossible.

I’ve often dreamed of what the atmosphere would be like at a Saturday night League game in Pairc Sean – I’ve been to floodlit games in Kerry, Mayo, Croker, Omagh and Parnell Park and the atmosphere is different. Maybe the fact that travelling supporters often make a weekend of it adds to the craic but under lights, even the cold, rain and wind of an Irish February doesn’t seem to hit as hard as it does on a Sunday afternoon.

It is easy to call for match-capable floodlights to spring up at venues around the county but I’ve witnessed the way floodlights have impacted Dromahair FC at the wonderful DARC facility, their home matches taking place on Saturday evenings, freeing up Sundays for whatever their players want to do. A Saturday night National League game might free up Pairc Sean for the hurlers or ladies footballers on a Sunday or even allow clubs to fit in League games.

Just consider what the atmosphere would be like if your club won a Saturday evening championship final under lights? The cavalcade back home that night and the celebrations the next day, it all seems irresistible as a concept. Of course, it isn’t that simple but maybe it is time we shed some light on the notion of light at our grounds?