Playing between the hedges: Eric Funston’s lifetime with Bonagee United

Eric Funston remembers playing from ‘hedge to hedge’ in a garden for his schoolboy football career.

This week, Bonagee United elected Funston as their new President, marking his unbroken service from the moment he first laced his own boots for the club.

His has been a long association, back to the days before organised football arrived in the form of the Donegal Junior League.

He became a committee member by default.

“In the early days, we were all on the committee,” he says. It was only ourselves in the club.

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“The grass had to be cut, the field had to be lined - and we had to do it. I just stayed with the club after I finished playing.”

Known as Arcade Athletic in the formative years of the Donegal Junior League, the club was christened Bonagee United in 1975.

Funston can recall he and others such as Victor Rainey playing at various locations.

He says: “When I started myself, we had no underage stuff. We played schoolboy football in Katie McFadden’s mother’s back garden. We just played hedge to hedge.”

They played for a time at a field owned by the Patton family at Magheraboy, but the purchase of what we now know as Dry Arch Park from George Bates for the princely sum of £1000 in 1971 proved to be a masterstroke.

Bonagee United was one of the first club’s to have changing facilities, modest and all as they might’ve been.

Funston says: “I remember there was a bit of ground between the Dry Arch Park and the pitch and it was like a wilderness of rushes. Eventually, we got a changing room from John McCrossan of Hawthown Heights. We had no water in it and we eventually got light in it. We worked on from that.”

Success on the field eluded them and there were times when it was a struggle.

He says: “We struggled big time in the early days. Before we joined the Donegal League, we had two teams that played friendlies. The novelty kind of wore off when the Donegal League started.”

The arrival of the legendary Bobby Toland gave a lift for a time and Funston, a defender by trade, played on until 1981, when he sustained a cartilage injury. He returned to play in 1984 for a period, but he was now destined for administrative roles.

He has filled practically every role at Bonagee United over the years - he served various periods as treasurer and secretary and had a term as the club chairman - and he continues to be one of the cogs that keeps the wheels turning.

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He can go back to the days when the Bonagee Show’ (the club’s home was referred to as the Bonagee Showgrounds prior to being named Dry Arch Park) was such a big event that the football club had to break away into a separate 

“The Bonagee Show became bigger than the football ever would be,” Funston says. “We were at meetings chatting about cows and horses instead of football.”

He remembered Paddy McFadden as being an ‘anchorman’ and the arrival of Hughie McGuinness was another key addition in the 70s.

“Laurence Gildea was was knocking about in the early days and Derek Hunter has been around for a long time,” he says of two other long-serving Bonagee United members.

The facilities now, at Dry Arch Park, Goose Green and Old Foundry Park, are in marked contrast to the formative years.

“I’m very proud of what we have in Bonagee,” he says.

“We always had a good group of people at Bonagee. We’re blessed in the club that people stayed with us.”

Being named as the club president is, he says, ‘a huge honour’.

Bonagee United Chairman Niall Callaghan said: “I was delighted to propose Eric Funston as the new President of Bonagee United Football Club. Eric has had a long and successful association with the club and it is only right that we acknowledge his many years of endeavour, often with little success to match. It is thanks to the hard work and dedication of people like Eric Funston that Bonagee United now finds itself on such a strong foundation.”