Faith repaid
November 30, 2005
By capturing the 2005 Meath intermediate football championship, the footballers of Duleek repaid the faith of their loyal followers who stuck by them over the years through think and thin. This includes club sponsor Farmvale Ltd., a local company that has been active as a going concern for 18 years and sponsoring Duleek GAA for the past nine of those. Founder and MD Aidan Ryan was thrilled by the club's long-overdue return to senior ranks.
It's been a bumpy road for the footballers of Duleek but they will be back amongst the big boys in 2006. Barney Rock's charges claimed the intermediate championship for the first time in 27 years by virtue of a superb county final replay defeat of Syddan at the county grounds on Sunday October 2 2005.
The celebrations that followed the landmark victory were fully justified. Duleek had been agonisingly pipped by Wolfe Tones in the '04 IFC final (2-10 to 1-12) and were in grave danger of becoming the nearly-men of intermediate football in the Royal County. It was imperative that they got the better of Syddan in the replayed decider, and the players didn't disappoint, delivering a gritty. Resolute display worthy of the occasion.
The end result is that Duleek will compete for the Keegan Cup next summer. The 2006 SFC campaign will be a fitting testament to all those- players, mentors, committee members, supporters and sponsors - who kept the faith when times were lean.
When the men with the legend 'Farmvale' emblazoned across their chests took the spoils on intermediate county final replay day, few in the grounds were happier than Aidan Ryan, the driving force behind the aforementioned company. Aidan stood by the local GAA club through the hard times and is delighted, as team sponsor, to have played a part in their return to prominence.
"They have been going really well recently and winning such a competitive championship was a brilliant achievement. They had been knocking on the door and it's great to see their perseverance rewarded. There's great spirit in the club and I'm confident they'll be good enough to hold their own against the top clubs in the county. After everything they've gone through to get here, I don't think they'll surrender their senior status lightly."
Duleek finally reached the Promised Land with a stunning county final replay defeat of Syddan on the first Sunday in October. They had to do it against the odds as they were forced to field without key man Karl McDonnell at midfield and lost two of their starting team to injury inside the first half. Under such circumstances, nobody could argue with the merit of this historic success.
After years of toil, anguish, heartache and near misses, Duleek had finally regained the Meath intermediate football championship. At Pairc Tailteann on Sunday October 2 2005, the Duleek men booked their return to the top flight by virtue of a narrow but deserved 2-7 to 2-6 win. They kicked their last point of the replayed final at the start of the fourth quarter, but weathered the ensuing storm and held out manfully for a famous win.
The game quickly assumed an unusual scoring pattern, with points proving hard to come by but four goals - two apiece - delivered in the first half. Crucially, though, the Green & Whites restricted their opponents to a solitary point during that opening period and led by 2-4 to 2-1 at the interval.
Though the football didn't flow so freely, the replay was every bit as captivating as the drawn encounter of two weeks earlier. Trevor Gilsenan gave Syddan an early lead from the penalty spot but the men of Duleek - with the whiff of destiny in their nostrils - refused to panic.
Shorn of influential midfielder Karl McDonnell, Barney Rock's side suffered a second blow when wing back Gordon Hynes was forced out of the action at the end of the first quarter. Duleek also lost midfielder Adrian Joyce on the stroke of half time but they made light of all their misfortune to hold out for a deserved and long-overdue success
Goals from Peter Curran and James Devereaux (the hero of the drawn match, who came off the bench to hit a late equaliser that day) had the would-be winners three points to the good at the short whistle.
Captain Tony Cunningham gave a stirring display in the centre of the park and years of pain came to a beautiful end when he received the Mattie McDonnell Cup from county chairman Fintan Ginnity.
Longstanding sponsor Aidan Ryan is thrilled for everybody associated with the club, and is suitably pleased that his loyalty to Duleek has been rewarded with a triumph to savour.
Aidan established Farmvale Ltd. in 1987 and has been acting as sponsor to Duleek for the past nine seasons. Headquartered at Athcarne, Duleek, Farmvale specialises in agricultural contracts, groundworks, landscaping, fencing and plant hire.
The personable proprietor also heads up a sister company, Castleview Homes, which carries out residential and commercial building. Castleview was established circa 1990 and is renowned throughout Meath and north county Dublin for house-building of the very highest quality.
Aidan and his crew build once-off hi-spec houses, offering a comprehensive all-inclusive service - from site clearance right through to landscaping and painting. On the GAA front, Castleview Homes has developed clubhouses for the Fingallians and The Naul clubs in the capital.
Between the two companies, anything up to 70 or 80 people are employed, depending largely on the workload at any given time. There's no shortage of available work for companies with such glowing reputations as Farmvale and Castleview Homes, however, and it's not uncommon for work to be ongoing on anything up to 20 projects at once.
Great care is taken with every project, with painstaking attention to detail and thorough professionalism and expertise applied at all times.
Aidan has been living in Duleek for 21 years and runs the two companies in conjunction with wife and co-director Shirley. How did the sponsorship of the local GAA club materialise? "Our kids all went to the local school and we did some sponsorship there and it developed from that.
"We've had the name on the jersey for the past five or six years. It was brilliant to see them winning the intermediate championship this year. It's a great day for everybody in Duleek. There was a lot of confidence in the team at the start of the year and the players and selectors lived up to those expectations.
"We're just proud to have been associated and hopefully there are many more big days ahead for Duleek."
There probably are.
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