*Bradley Higgins and Hocine Bensadok chase Aaron Rudd in the club’s last outing at adult level. Photograph: Joe Buckley
CLARE’S oldest soccer club, Lifford AFC has withdrawn from the Clare District Soccer League (CDSL)’s Premier Division.
Currently sitting second from bottom in the Premier Division, Lifford have confirmed they are unable to fulfil the remainder of their fixtures this season but club officers are adamant they will be fielding an adult side next season.
A fortnight ago, the Ennis side suffered a 5-0 defeat to Newmarket Celtic where they lined out with just eleven players, their manager Nathan Phelan was among those to take to the field. They were scheduled to face Tulla Utd on Sunday but this fixture did not take place.
In a statement, the CDSL confirmed they were “regrettably informed” by Lifford “that they will no longer be able to fulfil games in the Maloney Hardware Premier Division this season due to injuries and a lack of player availability”.
Rule 47 (D) of the CDSL’s constitution states, “Should a club or team fail to complete its fixtures, three points shall be awarded to the disappointed teams for each of the unplayed matches, except when a team has played less than half its scheduled matches then it’s record shall be deleted completely”.
As Lifford have completed over half of their fixtures in the Premier Division, their record will stand but their remaining ties will result in 3-0 victories for their opponents.
During the January transfer window, the club lost a total of five players. Avenue Utd snapped up their captain Chuks Obadeyi with Aidan Jordan joining Hermitage, Lucas Silva signed for Newmarket Celtic while both Christian da Silva Cunha and Jorge Becker moved to Brazilian side Brazuca United who line out in the fifth tier of the Limerick District League.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, long-standing Lifford AFC club officer Aiden O’Neill outlined, “the club is fine but we can’t carry on for the remainder of the adult season. We had a very tight panel and we’ve picked up a couple of serious injuries, it became a player welfare thing, we couldn’t expect lads to turn out with only eight or nine players at a time and see out the season. We ran low on numbers, we had three problematic injuries and two defections, having initially had a panel of seventeen or eighteen. In junior football, you rarely go out with the same eleven every week and we couldn’t expect the same lads to keep going with the wear and tear of playing every week”.
Having been such a dominant force of Clare soccer in the 1970s winning the Clare Cup in 1974 and 1975 along with double success in 1976, the club as recently as 2023 reached the Clare Cup final, the folding of the adult side for the remainder of the season is undoubtedly a dark hour for the sport in both the town and county.
“It is a sad day for the town, Lifford is 65 years old this year but what has happened is symptompatic of a number of things. We have an increased amount of teams in the town with Ennis Dons and Fair Green Celtic forming in recent years. We’ve seen Inch Crusaders at the beginning of this season and Kilkishen Celtic the year before folding having been in the Premier Division. We’re sad about it, we had a player, management and a committee meeting on Friday evening, there was a core group there and we’re positive about September but we are caught in a scenario which we never got into before,” Aidan stated.
Despite their current predicament, Lifford had been competitive at stages of the current campaign, they dropped points early on including a costly 2-2 draw with Shannon Town at the beginning of December and narrowly losing to Avenue in November. “Over our last three games, we played Newmarket and lost 5-0 but it was 0-0 at half-time, they got an early goal in the second half, we missed a penalty and had another goal disallowed but we ran out stream only having eleven players. Before that, Bridge Utd outclassed us 4-0. It took a last minute goal for Avenue to beat us. The guys didn’t down tools, it was just there wasn’t enough of them in it, it’s not as if we threw in the towel, it just became a numbers thing. The club had to look out for player welfare, 22.9 is the average age of our team so they are either very old kids or very young men, it is unfair on them to play with only eight or nine compatriots every week, we wouldn’t look to put them in that position”.
O’Neill said Lifford AFC will be re-entering an adult team in the CDSL next season, “Lifford will be back I can assure you,” he maintained. “We won’t fool ourselves and think we’ll be allowed straight back into the Premier Division because if we were looking at this situation from the view of another club we’d have a degree of ire about that. We’d hope we wouldn’t be put into the Third Division because we feel we’d be too strong, we’re not too good for it but we’d be worthy of a place in the First Division and the league table doesn’t lie, we were struggling and we could have ended up in the First Division anyway”.
Manager Phelan will stay on and O’Neill said the club has already recruited a “high profile” assistant coach but kept tight-lipped on their identity. “We’re still an attractive prospect, our manager Nathan Phelan has already recruited an assistant coach, he is high profile and he will attract players to the club. We’ve a core group of eight to build off but we need eighteen to be any bit fruitful. I’ve no doubt we will have that but we will be a bit more robust in the way we recruit in so far as the calibre of player we’re looking for and the commitment of the player we are looking for. We refused players this year because there was a question over their commitment, on reflection, is that a mistake, no I don’t believe so because you can carry on as you were and not be going anywhere, Lifford always sees itself as a progressive club, we were the first club in the county to own their ground and as of this year we have it in full ownership, we are only one of nine clubs in the county to own our grounds and we are the first in the town of Ennis to own our grounds”.
Throughout its history, Lifford has been accustomed to setbacks, Aiden outlined. “The academy is providing a lot of our base, I’d make this comparison, your academy and senior men’s team is like the foundation and the roof of the house, if one if is not functioning the other will feel an effect but our foundation is very strong with the academy, we’ve over fifty kids and ten coaches which is one of the most envious coaches to player ratios so the academy is flying it and we’re very happy with that, we know the academy is well taken of. There’s always bumps and hollows, we regenerated when Ennis Town broke away and the same with Avenue Utd which was a breakaway club (founded in 1983), we’ve seen the same thing when members were involved in setting up Fair Green, we’re used to adversarial conditions and we’ve always bounced back, I’ve no doubt this will be no different and that is not me speaking for a PR stunt”.
Founded in 1961 before the formation of the CDSL, Lifford’s birth grew out from Ennis United who had lined out in the Limerick District League. The club’s founding members included Michael O’Gorman, Frank McInerney, Jimmy Coughlan, Noel Bane and Declan and Freddy Ensko. Both O’Gorman and McInerney were also centrally involved in setting up the CDSL.
Lifford joined the inaugural Clare League and played their first game on Sunday October 14, 1962 against Gardimex wearing their new red strip, which was purchased for the sum of £13 from Mick Coleman’s shop in O’Connell Street. Lifford won its first title in 1963 when Syl Cosgrove captained them to win the Fergus Cup. In 1968, the club played under the name Rockmount due to a dispute with the CDSL.
In 1984, Lifford established a schoolboys section with a ladies team created in 1988. Lifford produced a number of schoolboy internationals including Gary Flynn and Alan Brooks. The Ladies team too provided a conveyor belt of talent to Irish teams. Lifford ladies also enjoyed a spectacular period of success from the early nineties onwards, winning numerous county and national titles.
