Donegal GAA Centre simply cannot continue to facilitate current traffic - Coughlan 

Mary Coughlan says the Donegal GAA Centre in Convoy is operating above capacity right now and that burden simply has to be eased. 

Donegal senior football team boss Jim McGuinness revealed his side had little training done in the lead in to Sunday’s NFL loss away to Roscommon, explaining that most of their own base was currently out of bounds. 

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The heavy rainfall, coupled with so many teams using the facility, has resulted in all five pitches sustaining damage. 

Coughlan says staff are doing their utmost but with a high volume of adult and underage county teams using the base for training as well as some games, it’s proving difficult to sustain that same traffic. 

Playing surfaces aren’t being rotated and, as a result, can’t be maintained. 

Donegal chairperson Coughlan says she hopes co-operation from clubs, as well as assistance from Coiste na nÓg, can help alleviate some of the pressure in the coming weeks.  

“The Convoy facility is under serious pressure, as is every pitch in Ireland right now,” she said. “The amount of rainfall since the turn of the year has been serious. And it’s having a real effect on playing surfaces. 

“Our centre houses our senior men’s footballers and hurlers, our U-20s, minors, ‘16s and ‘15s. That’s the exact same on the ladies' side with the recent addition of our senior camogie team now as well. 

“So we have a huge volume of teams and players using the pitches there. We’re also having to facilitate games like minor football and underage hurling. 

“MacCumhaill Park being closed just adds to the pressure. We’re very grateful to the likes of Buncrana, later this evening with the U-20s, and Ballyshannon recently as well, for helping out with certain fixtures.  

“Everyone is doing their absolute best to try to make pitches available and indeed playable. Abbotstown was even closed there for a period. So everyone is finding the going particularly tough on that front. 

“It’s just unnatural, the amount of rain that we’ve had”.

Coughlan says that as conditions begin to improve, she hopes some club grounds will be able to assist by staging some underage fixtures. That would be of real assistance. 

“I’m very anxious this year, at underage level,  that we get cooperation with the Coiste, that clubs will provide facilities for our underage. 

“Because Convoy just cannot physically facilitate what’s currently going on. At the end of the day, it’s a training centre so we have to be careful that we treat it as that. 

“We are very lucky to have what we have; plenty of other counties are much worse off. 

And like most problems, this isn’t an insurmountable one. We just need to work together to find some solutions. 

“But if the level of rainfall were to ease off, that would be a small step in the right direction”.