BANDON AUG 1999

BANDON EXPANSION




Those Bandon boys never stop. No sooner have they completed one job than they're to the next. Boosted no doubt by a £45,000 grant from the National Lottery, the committee, out in force to celebrate Denis Hayes's Manager of the Year Award at Murphy's Brewery last week, announced further expansion.



Not that the £45,000 will be enough. The Bandon committee will be fund-raising and intend to match, even better, the lottery loot.



The major plank of the new plans centres on the provision of a third pitch at Town Park. It will be constructed on the undeveloped ground immediately behind the club-house and will be used for the rapidly growing schoolboys section.



Chairman Tony O'Leary says plans are in the pipeline to fence the main pitch, one of the best in Munster, to upgrade entrances, pathways, and drainage, and generally to put every square inch of ground to good use.



Groundsman Frank Corcoran has pronounced himself happy with the new synthetic training area whose grass surface has settled well after a few problems in the first year. Frank says it will be perfect for the new season.



Indeed, it is hard to top this development which measures some 60m x 40m and is floodlit. The foundation is a grid drainage system and 200 hundred tonnes of pea gravel were laid immediately on top of that. Then came no less than 850 tonnes of sand and that included about 10 per cent of organic matter so that the grass could take hold.



The fenced off facility is a great incentive to get out and train, better than indoors. And it will be used extensively. Bandon have three junior sides, one under 17, five schoolboys, and one ladies.



Denis Hayes, the AUL Manager of the Year for 1998/99, came from Farnanes where he won first division honours and has been involved with Bandon for the past 13 seasons. He took over as manager of the second team in 1995 and success came immediately as they topped their second division. It has been up all the way since then as the second team became the first and now, after winning Premier A last term, will be going all out to make an impact in the AUL Premier League itself in the coming season.