Derry GAA, famous for its club football.
Famous for its competitiveness. Famous for Enda Muldoon.
You’d go a long way to find Gaels as proud as those you would uncover in every corner of Derry and, whilst there might well be apathy around the county setup at times, the club is still very much at the heart of the lives of men and women all over the Oak Leaf county.
But, as is the sad reality for a lot of small clubs, they’re going to fall on hard times.
Although Derry has a decent-size population, they also have almost half of the county’s entire population in the city where there are just four football clubs – four out of 38.
Derry city has a big soccer community and, similar to every big town, it also has way more options than just playing football. So, despite probably less than half of the nationalist population of the county living in rural Derry outside of the city, 89 per cent of the football clubs are residing there.
That means, they’re going to struggle at times for numbers. A few barren underage teams can cripple a senior side in future – injuries, work, emigration, all these things take their toll eventually and, so there’s no surprise when teams take beatings now and again because they simply have to regenerate.
Ardmore is a small club just outside the city but, by Jesus, it’s a proud one.
Any footballer would have a story to tell you about a tough day in Ardmore against tough men who’d believe any team was beatable when they came up to St. Mary’s.
This year though, it’s looking like it’s going to be a long season for the black and amber as they’ve already shipped one defeat and 40 points in just one game.
The worst of it? They didn’t manage even one score themselves.
Limavady hit 6-22 against Ardmore in the opening round of Division Three in Derry’s football league and they hit all of them without reply, winning in the end by 40 to zero.
In Division One, there were more shocks as Ballinderry went down at home to Swatragh and Kilrea suffered an unexpected defeat at the hands of the newly-promoted Newbridge.
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