The Galway Football Association has agreed to collaborate with Galway United.
Viewed as a positive development, Tom Trill, Galway FA chairman, is delighted with the link up with full details to be disclosed shortly.
Following extensive negotiations between both parties, local clubs have backed the proposals which will see United involved in assisting Galway FA inter-league teams.
“This was a massive win for Galway football over the last couple of weeks,” Trill says. “We met with the clubs earlier on last week to explain the last part of this to them, we needed their buy in on it, to see whether they were happy with the proposals and they were.
“There will be more announcements proper made in the next few weeks, but we now have agreed to collaborate with Galway United in relation to running the representative teams and the League of Ireland development squads.”
Trill believes the approach will assist with player welfare and development. “Over the last couple of years we had issues where players had to make a decision whether they were going to go League of Ireland or representative team before it was their time to go to League of Ireland,” Trill adds.
“Obviously the League of Ireland team had to see them before they picked them, but you had a situation where lads were going training on a Sunday morning after being with their club all week, probably playing a match and then they were going into an inter-league training on a Sunday morning and then trying to get to a national league development squad session in the afternoon. It just wasn't fair on the child.
“At the end of the day, that should be our focus all of us involved in the game, to get that child enjoying the game, to develop them at the speed they can develop at.”
Trill praised the stakeholders involved in the discussions. “In fairness all the heads have come together, we have come out with very progressive and strong developments that are going to benefit the game in the future,” he says. “The feedback into ourselves at grassroots is that it is going to raise the standard of our game.”
**Listen to the full interview with Galway FA chairman Tom Trill on this week’s ‘Cian on Sport’ podcast available on Spotify, Soundcloud, and Apple Podcasts.
