Eoghan McGonigle admits he’s unsure if Plunkett will be able to move up into Division 1C with the 2A champions in a race against time to upgrade their home ground.
The West Belfast outfit have until May 20 to meet the criteria set out by the IFA, with their base at Lenadoon still lacking some of the requisite facilities for Intermediate football.
Assistant boss McGonigle insists they are “exploring all their options” at the minute, but has ruled out the possibility of a groundshare – an option they would have been required to notify the Amateur League about by January past in any event.
“The club is exploring all options and it is part of our plan over the next few years to make sure we have things in place to go up to take the next step for the club as a whole, but we’re not quite sure about next sea- son yet, we’ll see how it goes,” he said.
Plunkett rounded off their season in emphatic style on Saturday, routing Shankill United 6-3 to complete an unbeaten league campaign, with Ciaran Reid grabbing a hat-trick and Ciaran Smyth, Sean Jackson and Padraig McParland also on target.
A 3-0 home win over Finaghy last Tuesday clinched the title, but with another two games in four days, the champagne was on ice to see if they could go the distance without losing a single game, a superb feat in such a competitive division.
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And that they did, to the immense pride of McGonigle and manager Peter Murray.
“There’s a great, great buzz around the club at the minute,” added McGonigle, referencing the overall health of a club which saw a host of underage clubs win their respective leagues, including their National League 16s and 18s, the latter bid- ding for a double last night against Linfield in the Harry Cavan Cup final at Windsor.
“We were disappointed with the Junior Cup [a quarter-final exit to Tummery Athletic] and we’d a decent run in the Clarence [a quarter-final exit to Shankill United], taking a Premier Division side to extra-time and penalties, so we were unlucky in that and since then, we’ve only had one thing to focus on so we just got the head down and got after it,” explained McGonigle.
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“The good thing about it too is we went to Greenisland, we got a good result, and got the job done against Finaghy, and that enabled us then to look at finishing unbeaten.
“The lads weren’t prepared to stop at Greenisland, the lads wanted to go on and finish unbeaten themselves, so there wasn’t any celebrating done until after the game on Saturday and that’s testament to all the lads, they’ve dug in this year and really went for it so we can’t really ask for too much more from them.”
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