BY the very nature of the award, they had plenty of competition, but Steelstown are our Club of the Year.

The Derry City club had a phenomenal year on two fronts – not only did their men’s team win the All-Ireland Intermediate title, but their ladies went all the way to the Ulster Intermediate final, losing narrowly to Kinalwey.

It’s been some road to the top: Steelstown are one of the younger clubs in Derry having been founded in 1987, but it hasn’t always been plain sailing. Their men’s footballers tasted more heartache in the Derry Championship than they’d care to mention, but they smashed through the glass ceiling with their first ever title and didn’t stop there as they ended up claiming provincial and All-Ireland honours.

And who can forget captain Neil Forester’s remarkable victory speech – “We’re a young club. We were founded by Anthony McGurk, Mickey Doherty, Phillip Devlin. They were told that there was no Gaelic football in the city, but they did not listen!”, to quote just one line.

Their senior ladies won another championship and lost to Kinawley by a point in the Ulster final.

Off the pitch, their newly opened strength and conditioning suite is in full swing.

So it’s all happening at the club and their chairman Paul O’Hea expressed his delight that they were crowned Club of the Year, an especially prestigious accolade at our All-Stars event.

“It was brilliant, the last few months for everyone has been a whirlwind. We’ve never had success like that before, so it capped things off lovely. We had our own dinner dance on Saturday night and it was fantastic to have the three All-Star awards and to round it off with Club of the Year was brilliant. A lot of clubs do great work every year so for us to get the award is a brilliant honour.”

Recognising that this is the culmination of decades of hard work, O’Hea continued: “We talked about it at the dinner dance, the people who were part of the club in the early days, when we didn’t have as much success, their hard work has paid off. It’s a cumulative thing, the senior teams take a lot of the plaudits but there has been a lot of work the whole way through.”

Sean McGuigan picked up the merit award on behalf of Sleacht Néill, and he’s pictured  alongside  Padraig McCallan, MCB Civils, Padraic McKeever, McKeever Sports and Austin Lynch, Gaelic Life. St Eunan’s were also nominated. MC 17

READ MORE – Steelstown’s homecoming as All-Ireland champions. Click here…