MONS NEW UNDER 20'S MAKE HEADLINE NEWS IN CAVAN

 

Success for new boys BJD Celtic by Paul Fitzpatrick (The Anglo Celt)

 

A new soccer club in Ballyjamesduff has received a major boost with the news that five of its young players will represent eircom league side Monaghan United at Under 20 level in the coming months.  READ MORE HERE

 

 

May 11 2010:  League champions visit Gortakeegan - by Adrian Harte

 

What better way to bounce back from a rare defeat than the visit of the league champions. Monaghan United were somewhat unlucky to see their excellent recent run come to and end on Friday last against Derry City but Mick Cooke's men have no time to lick their wounds as they face Bohemians this evening in the second round of the EA Sports League Cup at Gortakeegan.

 

As well as rising to third in the Airtricity First Division table in recent weeks, United have impressed in the League Cup, overcoming Shelbourne 1-0 and Tullamore Town 6-1 to earn a tilt at the best team in the country on home turf.

 

After an indifferent start to the season, Bohs are back bang in form with three wins in their past four matches. It is the Gypsies' first outing in the competition this season after a series of byes and they will be firmly favoured to progress. With the Setanta Cup final against St Patrick's Athletic on Saturday on their mind, Bohs may not field their strongest eleven but promising young players such as Ruadhri Higgins, Aaron Greene and Paddy Madden could all feature. Should he be selected, regular first-team midfielder Killian Brennan will come up against his brother in Monaghan's Sean.

 

Sean, conventionally a tidy ball-playing midfield player himself, has blossomed this season when pressed into emergency service as a striker with five goals in all competition. United fans are also likely to see some of the squad's local contingent in action, with Niall Flynn likely to continue to start in the centre of defence. United, who had put together a run of seven wins and two draws in seven matches prior to the Derry defeat, will be aiming to avoid back-to-back defeats and seeking to reach the last eight of the League Cup for the first time.

 

After Derry brought a welcome splash of colour and noise to Gortakeegan four days ago, Bohs are likely to do likewise and it promises to be another exciting evening. Whatever the weather, Monaghan fans are advised to take a break from the round-the-clock UK election and Irish recession coverage on TV and sample some real 3D football while savouring the ultimate coalition of a Mon Dog and a pint in the Clubhouse.

 

Kick-off at Gortakeegan is 8pm  

 

 

May 7 2010  BACK TO THE FUTURE AS MONS HOST HIGH-FLYING DERRY - by Adrian Harte

 

It will be a case of back to the future tonight at Gortakeegan when Monaghan United welcome Airtricity League First Division leaders Derry City.

 

This year marks 25 years since both sides made their League of Ireland bows. Indeed, Monaghan's first ever home senior soccer match came against Derry City in Belgium Park in the League Cup in September 1985 (coincidentally the year in which the aforementioned film is set) resulting in a 2-0 Mons win in front of a bumper crowd. So large was the travelling Derry support - the club's first away game in the League of Ireland - that a large section of the Candystripes support watched the match from the main road overlooking United's former home.

 

Three months later, Derry avenged that reverse with a 2-0 win of their own when they returned to Belgium Park for the sides' League of Ireland First Division clash. Derry, under the stewardship of new player-manager Noel King, unveiled a new-look side for that game featuring debuts from future Derry legends Stuart Gauld, Oscar Da Gama and Nelson Da Silva, and they secured Derry's first ever League of Ireland win.

 

Back to the present and fans attending tonight's match will be able to relive those two historic meetings in great detail in text and photos in the special commemorative 48-page programme published for tonight's match. The publication also includes a detailed A-Z of Monaghan United's 25 years of football history including such entries as K for Keane and W for Westlife.

 

And of course the match itself promises to be a cracker as it brings together the division's two form teams. Top-of-the-table Derry have shown themselves to be a Premier Division wolf in First Division sheep's clothing with their run of seven straight wins, while Monaghan, though disappointed to have been held by Mervue United midweek, have been in fine form themselves with seven wins and two draws in their last nine matches.

 

Derry, though, bring top-quality and top-flight players in the form of Mark Farren, a former Monaghan player, Barry Molloy and Gerard Doherty although they are without injured striker Ruari Harkin. Mons are again without Shane Grimes and Darragh Hanaphy but boast sufficient strength in depth that team captain Dom Tierney and last season's top scorer Karl Bermingham have been starting on the bench in recent weeks. 

 

Derry are sure to bring their traditional large and colourful support tonight so we would exhort soccer fans across the county and beyond come out and savour the atmosphere and hopefully enjoy some more Monaghan United history.

Adrian Harte

 

 

16th April 2010:  Weekend kicks off with Monaghan United v Waterford United - by Adrian Harte

 

Monaghan United entertain the Airtricity First Division league leaders Waterford United at Gortakeegan tonight and there is no better time to get behind Mick Cooke's team.

 

The Mons have gone all Roger Federer in recent weeks, winning their past two matches 6-1, 6-1, and now lie fifth in the league table. Indeed, only the exiled big three of Cork, Derry City and Shelbourne and leaders Waterford have fared better than United this season.

 

United's 6-1 win over Salthill Devon last weekend, followed by Tuesday's EA Sports Cup victory by the same scoreline against Tullamore Town, has raised expectations at Gortakeegan. Sean Brennan has hit five goals in his last two matches while Phillip Hughes returned from injury to hit a classy hat-trick against Tullamore.

 

Add in the guile and goals of Karl Bermingham, the defensive leadership of Brian Gartland and the wing wizardry of Barry Clancy and United are playing some very attractive and effective football at the minute. The club's youth system, which has produced Jonathan Douglas, Mark Connolly and Aaron McCarey in recent years, continues to supply players to the first team and teenagers Niall Flynn and Phillip Donnelly will be part of tonight's squad.

Waterford have won all six league games this season and will certainly provide a stern test for the home side. Stephen Henderson has put together an experienced squad, with former Port Vale, Cork City and Ipswich Town player George O'Callaghan expected to make his debut tonight. Waterford's squad is liberally sprinkled with quality, also boasting former Celtic and Livingstone striker Vinny Sullivan and former Ireland under-21 international Liam Kearney.

Let your weekend start at Gortakeegan tonight (kick-off 8pm) and get behind your local team. We look forward to seeing plenty of new faces.

FORMER MON MOVES TO ST JOHNSTONE

Monaghan United juvenile Mark Connolly has swapped the English Premiership for the Scottish Premiership as he took up a loan stint with St Johnstone.  It was seen as a great opportunity for the young Clones lad to get some valuable first team experience to heighten his chances of making it big with Bolton in the future. 

Connolly left Monaghan United FC and moved to Wolverhampton Wanderers in 2008 and in the summer of 2009 made the move to Bolton.  He has impressed at Bolton in their reserves team and it was felt that in order to be able to break through to the First team, he needed some to get some extra experience and so the loan move to St Johstone came about.

Monaghan United FC wish Mark all the best in Scotland and are sure that he will make the most of this opportunity. 

 

INTERVIEW WITH AARON McCAREY ON WOLVES WEBSITE HERE

 

Safe hands and eyes on the prize…Aaron strives to be big fish in big pond by Peter Hughes

 

 When I think of my father, I think of him as a fly-fisherman.

 

 My sharpest memory of him is seated at the table in our big front room, his workman's hands surprisingly dexterous as he went about the delicate task of tying flies.

 

 And when I imagine him, it's usually as a fisherman too, riverwater lapping against his waders as he practices his patient art, the swish swish swish of his cast singing out in the hope rather than the expectation of ensnaring something gleaming and special.

 

 I grew up to be a journalist of sorts. Don't know what he would have made of that. But I feel a kinship with him when it comes to the interview, an art of which I imagine I am a considerably less adept practitioner than he was of his.

 

 Interviewing is the newspaperman's fishing expedition, mostly carried out in less than ideal conditions when it comes to time and opportunity. Into what is more often than not a resistant wind, you cast out questions in the hope of reeling in something of value, something with which to refine the coarse weave of cliché into more upmarket material.

 

 Mostly the catch is modest. But occasionally you land a beauty.

 

 Speaking to Monaghan United Chairman Jim McGlone and the club's much talked about young goalkeeper Aaron McCarey last Friday, I got lucky.

 

 It wasn't some piece of incisive interrogation on my part. A conversational opportunity opened up and Aaron took it, like he would a cross arrowing out of the floodlight glare into the six-yard box.

 

 Leaning forward, he said: "You need to set goals for yourself, or you will not succeed, or achieve." 

 

 The words counted less than the quietly emphatic way they were expressed. For the expanse of the sentence the becoming diffidence of the likeable 17-year-old dropped away and you glimpsed the Tungsten steel gleam that caught the eye of English Premiership newcomers Wolverhampton Wanderers and has made every knowledgeable judge I have spoken to in recent months predict great things for the young Monaghan man.

 

 For someone making an epic journey in a breathtakingly short space of time, Aaron's feet appear mostly firmly fixed on terra firma. He had spent the early part of the week having his first substantial taste of the training facilities at Molineaux - he has signed a pre-contract agreement with Mick McCarthy's club and will formally become a Wolves player on a professional contract in the January transfer window - and after we spoke he was off on his travels again - first to the RSC where he was to keep another clean sheet in United's impressive 2-0 vanquishing of First Division promotion aspirants Waterford United, and then to the more exotic setting of Turkey as part of Sean McCaffrey's Republic of Ireland U-18 squad.

 

 The weekly commute from the Wolves' lair to Kingspan Century Park will continue until the Irish season's end, an arrangement that suits both parties - the English club content to see their new recruit continue his ascendant learning curve in the "grown up" Irish game, and the Mons pleased to have their goalkeeper's gifts, refined by Premiership coaching, at their disposal as they round off a very pleasing season to which McCarey has contributed in no small measure since breaking into the first team at the midpoint of the campaign.

 

 Why Wolves? seemed a good starting point; it was well known the hunting pack was a large one. Aaron's response was refreshingly free of any evidence of being beguiled by glamour: "They are a warm, welcoming club, and they make you feel at home. They have a big Irish contingent, and the Irish boys all look out for one another."

 

 Aaron will be part of the Wanderers' development squad, working under goalkeeping coach Pat Mountain, but it is apparent that he is not stepping into some never-never land separated by a glass ceiling from the prospect of first-team football.

 

 As Jim McGlone made patent: "There is a clear opportunity there for Aaron. The position he will occupy at Wolves is effectively fourth choice 'keeper. If he develops as I think he will, there is a chance for him to step up the hierarchy and make a bit for the No.3 spot, then the No.2, and so on."

 

 "From January I will be involved with the Wolves reserves," Aaron pointed out. "My first objectives are to try to get a few reserve team games under my belt, and get involved with the squad that contests the FA Youth Cup."

 

 Later, he added: "I want to get into the first team, but I know that can't just happen. It will take a lot of hard work, as will a future in international football, but that is a goal I hope to achieve as well."

 

 Delight and pride vie for the foreground in the Monaghan United Chairman's contribution to the discussion. Aaron is the second United player within 12 months to be snapped up by Wolves, his predecessor Mark Connolly being currently involved in a move to Bolton Wanderers.

 

 "The people at Wolves have declared themselves very impressed with our set-up," Jim told me. "To get two players through to the English ranks so quickly has prompted them to explore the possibility of developing an association with us because they see the potential inherent in our youth structures."

 

 Other clubs across the water are also interested in pursuing an alliance with Monaghan United, something which Jim regards as a powerful endorsement of the major investment in resources the club have devoted to establishing a pathway through the youngest playing levels right up to their first team.

 

 The Chairman's ambition is to see the establishment of a Youth Academy at the Kingspan Century Park complex that would form a magnet to attract young players from throughout the country eager to nurture their nascent talents, "not necessarily with a view to signing with the club but in order to avail of top-level coaching."

 

 Aaron is proof positive that the Monaghan United pathway is a negotiable one. He attributed his breakthrough to the first team as crucial to his goalkeeping maturation: "Playing adult football brings you on in leaps and bounds. It is a big step-up, much faster and more physical."

 

 Aaron endorsed Jim McGlone's view that the coaching received from established No.1 Brendan Kennedy in the early part of the season had contributed a great deal to the assurance shown by him when he became the vastly experienced custodian's eventual successor.

 

 And it is that assurance that promotes Aaron out of the standard "very good" or "very promising" categories that players of his years usually occupy, and into a more elite designation.

 

 Most goalkeepers who make the grade in the Irish senior game are good, instinctual shotstoppers, the characteristic that catches the eye when you first cast it in the direction of the man between the posts. Hold you gaze on them over the stretch of a season, however, and you usually spot what has inhibited further progress, little chinks in concentration, or judgement, or plain old self-assertion.

 

 Very often the surest barometer of a goalkeeper's quality is the confidence projected by the defenders for whom he is the policeman and the court of final appeal. 

 

 For me the most remarkable feature of Aaron McCarey's first-team run with Monaghan United has been the ease with his presence behind them that the back four have cultivated.

 

 My enthusiastic but relatively untrained eye tells me he is an outstanding goalkeeping prospect, an assessment which has appreciated in value each time it has been endorsed by the succession of seasoned journalists and football observers who have enjoyed his performances alongside me in the Monaghan United pressbox over recent months.

 

 Is he the finished article? Hardly. Who is at 17? But the occasional impetuosity will be tempered by experience, some of it hard no doubt, at a higher and less forgiving level. And the coltish physique will be moulded, hardened and refined by the formidable expertise of a modern Premiership club willing to devote its considerable resources to nurturing his substantial potential through painstaking attention to training, diet and psychological fine-tuning.

 

 A glorious chance beckons, but the leave-taking is not without its pangs. 

 

 Aaron is obviously very much at home in the Monaghan United set-up, thanking with feeling "everyone at the club for all they have done for me since I have been here, especially Jim for all his hard work, and Mick [United first team boss Mick Cooke] for giving me the opportunity to play in the first team." 

 

 He also paid tribute to international manager Sean McCaffrey: "Sean always gives you a chance. He is great with young players and he has given me very good advice on what they look for in the English game."

 

 Jim McGlone acknowledged that the young 'keeper "will be leaving behind a lot of people, family members and friends as well as all the people at the club who think so highly of him." But he's convinced that for Aaron the right time has come. 

 

 "I honestly believe that there is a right time to take this step, and this is the time for Aaron. Trying to make the grade in England is tough, but this is something that Aaron has always wanted to do. When you get an opportunity like this you have to take it. Aaron has been at the club for seven or eight years now, and I've always seen him step up to a challenge.

 

 "I have no doubt that Aaron will make the grade. He is not just going on a trip - I see him being a first-team 'keeper in the English professional game." 

 

I intended to end this piece with an exaggerated flourish, closing the circle back to where we came in. I was going to try to shill you into thinking that goalkeeping and fly-fishing sit in close relation in the grand scheme of things.

 

 But they don't, really. The patience required is comparable, the discipline, that Tungsten steel shine in the eye that gives away their master craftsmen. But their governing objectives are, ultimately, antithetical.

 

 So I'll finish with this simple wish: Empty nets, Aaron. And plenty of 'em!