The memory of Garda Colm Horkan is to be honoured with a new GAA memorial pitch and walkway in his hometown.
Work will begin later this year on the €300,000 project in memory of the garda who was shot dead in Castlerea, Co Roscommon, on June 18.
The facilities, expected to be finished by 2023, will be constructed and named after the detective at the Charlestown Sarsfields club in the Co Mayo town.
His cousin and club chairman Liam Breheny said yesterday he hopes Garda Horkan’s legacy will inspire the next generation of players.
He said: “It’s going ahead and it’s going forward on a big scale and there’s huge support for it.
“It’ll be a third pitch and it’ll be the Colm Horkan memorial pitch.
“We’ll hopefully have our official
fundraising launch in September and there’s already been considerable financial backing for it.”
Charlestown Sarsfields had planned to fundraise for a standard training pitch before the murder of the dedicated club stalwart last month.
The talented footballer played for more than two decades with Charlestown
and he was part of the squad and management, which won Mayo county titles in 2001 and 2009.
Mr Breheny added: “Originally we had planned we’d put in a decent pitch and we’d put in lights and that.
“But now [since Colm’s death] it has sort of taken on a new purpose and there has been overwhelming support both financially and to do a proper job.
“We want to do a community walkway around an embankment and looping around our two back pitches and around Colm’s pitch.”
Mr Breheny and the club’s vice secretary Tom McLoughlin met Connacht GAA secretary John Prenty and the Enniskillen-based Prunty Pitches.
He added: “It’s not just GAA lads, but it’s going to be community-based [support].
“Colm was a staunch GAA man, he was a mad sportsman, he was a mad community man and it will reflect that.”
Mr Breheny said Colm’s father and siblings are behind the proposals.
He added: “It’s something good and it’ll be something that will last for the next generation and in 50 years [people will know who he was].”
