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• Strive to secure our own home pitch in an attempt to gain Intermediate status

With the help one of our main sponsors, HEAT Ltd, we will move both of our teams to their own home pitch in Dunmurry. HEAT Ltd has recently purchased Richardson Park in Dunmurry village. Richardson Park was originally the home ground of the Post Office football club and latterly the British Telecom F.C amateur league team that played in 1a of the N.A.F.L. The B.T.F.C team disbanded approximately 5 years ago and since that another N.A.F.L team, Lisburn Rangers, leased the facilities from the British Telecom committee. Our plans are to have the pitch registered for season 2006-2007, hopefully by late October. The facilities are a match for most N.A.F.L premier teams and Iveagh are grateful to have a sponsor such as HEAT Ltd.

• Look at developing or form a partnership with an existing youth set up in order to produce players for the future.

Iveagh have recently formed a partnership with an already established youth team set up – Hawthorn Rec, who compete in the North Down & South Belfast football leagues. We feel that such an alliance will be beneficial to both parties – Iveagh would benefit from having a stream of young talent coming through on a yearly basis and also increasing their profile of both clubs. Iveagh employ a professional coach for their twice weekly training sessions and would be keen for the players and coaches of Hawthorn Rec to benefit from his expertise. Iveagh train twice a week, Tuesday & Thursday, in the Falls Park (summer), Brooke Activity Centre (Tuesday’s winter) & Chorpus Christie School (Thursday’s winter). With the impending move to Richardson Park, we hope that this will also become our training centre and we would hopefully offer the use of these facilities to our proposed partner, not just for training but also for match days.

I.U.F.C are keen that young players have an achievable target when they reach the age of 18 – too many young players move away from the game and end up in bars, clubs etc on Saturday afternoons and week nights when they could just as easily become involved in amateur football. We have strived to bring young players through over the last 2 years, and while the game can sometimes be a bit physical for their age groups, we have examples of players coming through at the age of 17 straight into the first team and holding their own.

Iveagh have strived over recent years to establish our team as a cross community team and we currently have players of various religions. We have also expanded our player base and while the nucleus of our team is from West Belfast, we have players from Carrickfergus, Downpatrick, Crumlin, Glengormley and even Dungiven currently on our books. We feel that this is another step forward for our club and we will continue to look at other means to increase our clubs standing in the local community. The future looks good.