A popular southside football club has been left “effectively homeless” after their clubhouse was knocked down due to constant vandalism.
The Sallynoggin Pearse FC clubhouse in Pearse Park was demolished by the council for health and safety reasons after it turned into “a hub of antisocial behaviour”.
Club chairman Richie Cummins told Dublin Live: “They broke in and set fire to the gear and destroyed the inside of it in September 2019. We did a patch up job on it.
“It was broken into a couple of times after and there was more damage. In March 2020 they set fire to it. Then the COVID-19 lockdown happened, but the building was being constantly broken into and vandalised because of where it was located in the park.
“There were no lights and stuff like that. It got smashed up and became a hub of antisocial behaviour.”
The council has leased the club a piece of land to build a new sports pavilion but that will take two years because there is a halting site that needs to be redeveloped first.
Mr Cummins added: “Essentially the council has knocked the building down for health and safety reasons. So we’re in a situation where we are effectively homeless.
“We’ve nowhere to train or anything like that.
“We asked the council if we could have something and they said unfortunately there’s no building suitable. It’s not in their budget to buy a temporary building for us.”
The club has been forced to set up an online fundraiser for money to buy an anti-vandal container which does not come cheap.
He said: “We’ve got on to a few different companies and it’s around €10,000 to buy the cabin and have it connected to the sewers and the electricity and all that sort of stuff.
“We are the former club of Paul McGrath and his advisor was on to us the other day. He said he’s going to get Paul to give us a shout out to try and get some publicity.”
Mr Cummins said that he was able to give the guards a Whatsapp video of the thugs inside the building but was told that they couldn’t use it because it was not CCTV footage.
He added: “ There’s been no convictions and no arrests from any of the incidents that have happened which is very frustrating. This is why we have to get an anti-vandal building.
“The other building’s been there since 1971.
“We’ve two seniors teams and an under-35s team. And if we’d had the clubhouse, we were planning on starting an academy next month.
“So we had to postpone the kids’ academy now. That’s another reason we need to get the temporary building.”
The demolition came as a shock for the team but Mr Cummins said that the council was under a lot of pressure from various residents about the antisocial behaviour happening around the building.
He added: “They didn’t really have much of a choice but it’s put us in a bit of a pickle. We need to get something now.”
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