Close community ties are at the very heart of the GAA. Sponsorship and goodwill are the lifeblood coursing through the veins of our great Association. By backing local club St Patrick's, Dromahair in their bid for Celebrity Bainisteoir glory, SL Controls is certainly doing its bit to keep the show on the road. In the age of reality TV, the GAA is refusing to get left behind. Shows like The Underdogs and Celebrity Bainisteoir have proven exceptionally popular with the sports-mad Irish public. The combination of fly-on-the-wall insight, warts 'n' all exposure and genuine gaelic passion is an undoubted winner that keeps us all glued to the screen, savouring the drama and action as it unfolds in our living rooms. St Patrick's, Dromahair are one of the clubs invited to take part in the new series of Celebrity Bainisteoir, a show that gives celebrities a chance to manage a GAA club and see how far they can go as aspiring Mick O'Dwyers. It's like Dancing On Ice meets Escape From Alcatraz. Or something. The Leitrim club have secured some valuable sponsorship from local company SL Controls, as they bid to set the reality TV world on fire. The television experience has given the local community a massive boost, much to the obvious delight of SL's financial director Darragh McMorrow: "The whole thing has been absolutely huge here," the Sligo man notes. "We're talking about a small rural club who have been challenging hard within intermediate ranks in Leitrim for a few years now. They have come close to going the full distance in the intermediate championship in recent seasons and this whole Celebrity Bainisteoir thing has given them further drive to complete their main goal of turning senior in 2009. They've started very well in the local intermediate league and I think they'll go close in the 2009 Leitrim IFC. And a lot of that will be down to the hype and excitement generated from their participation in the television show." SL Controls is owned by Shane Loughlin and is located in County Sligo, within a stone's throw of Leitrim. "St Pat's would be the local club, even though most of us here would be Sligo men. I'm a lifelong supporter of the Black & White myself," Darragh continues. SL Controls Limited was established in 2002. The company provides international consultancy, design, simulation and commissioning services for industrial automation equipment and control systems worldwide. These services are based around core strengths of Automation, Integration and Validation. Alongside Darragh the management team comprises Shane Loughlin as Techical Director and Keith Moran as Commercial Director. After starting with just two employees, the SL Controls team has since grown to 22. Its skill-set includes automation engineers, validation engineers, commissioning engineers and IT specialists. SL Controls has a world-class track record, with large projects successfully completed for multinational corporations within various industries. These include companies in high-speed manufacturing, semiconductor, bio-medical and pharmaceutical industries. In 2007, SL Controls opened a new, state-of-the-art, 6,000 square foot facility in Collooney Industrial Estate. So, how did the sponsorship begin? "Going back two or three years we would have been involved with Dromahair on a smaller scale and we'd have known some of their members from our base within the local community. They're local and it's our way of giving something back into the local community. When did word leak out that the club would be involved in Celebrity Bainisteoir? "We've known about it since the first weekend in December. That's when they were identified as one of the clubs that would be taking part and the buzz started almost immediately. Then we heard that Catherine Lynch would be the manager and the craic really began. The whole thing is great for the community here. "It was brilliant when the TV cameras came in for the first time and the team got a fantastic send-off when they headed off to play their first game against George Hook's side, which they won, to go through to the semi-final stage." Darragh himself is from the outskirts of Sligo town and was an underage member of the St John's club, before college commitments and work took him away from the local playing pitches. He remains an avid Yeats County supporter and is also confident that the Johns can compete for the SFC in Sligo this year: "It's certainly a coming club at the moment and they had five players on the Sligo team that beat Carlow in a recent national league game. They would be up there challenging the Tourlestranes and Eastern Harps of this world and there's a great feeling in the club that they're on the verge of a breakthrough. Johnny Stenson, who played for Sligo when they won the Connacht championship in 1975, is the manager this year and is assisted by PJ McGarrigle. They are doing great work in preparing for the championship." Speaking of Connacht championships, what about the Sligo Class of 2007? "They did magnificently well and it was great to see it, especially as there had been so many hard luck stories in the build-up to that. So many times they fell at the final hurdle "Last year was a disappointment but Kevin Walsh has added a fresh impetus to the squad and there are some good U21s coming through. There's a quiet confidence in the team again this year. They've been playing well and there's plenty more to come from this team. "It's not as if they were an old side in 2007. About 80% of those lads are still available. We have lost four or five key men, but there's good young talent coming through in Sligo, so we're optimistic about our prospects for 2009." How difficult is it to win a Connacht championship? Is the province's knockout competition perhaps a little bit underestimated? Unfairly maligned? After all, sides like Galway, Mayo, Roscommon, and even Leitrim on championship day, are never easily beaten "It's quite competitive and the likes of Sligo and Leitrim are always capable of pulling a big performance against Mayo and Galway as Sligo demonstrated by beating Galway in the 2007 Connacht championship. Then again, you can get a handy draw in Connacht and get to the final just by winning one game. Sligo were a bit unfortunate last year in that they weren't even allowed into the qualifiers, a competition that Sligo truly embraced in previous seasons and seen them compete and beat some of the "big boys" as they extended their run in the championship. Thankfully, they won't have to worry about that this year and every team is getting a shot at the qualifiers again." Tweet

Most Read Stories