Dublin club Clanna Gael Fontenoy will be helping to fund-raise for the Seán Cox Rehabilitation Trust on Friday evening, as the benefit match between Liverpool legends and their Ireland counterparts takes place in nearby Lansdowne Road.
Cox, the 53-year-old former chair of St Peter’s Dunboyne GAA club in Meath and Liverpool supporter, sustained life-changing injuries in an attack outside Anfield by visiting Roma supporters last year. It is hoped that he will be in a position to attend Friday’s match.
Those with long memories may recall that the Sandymount club had a more controversial brush with soccer nearly 28 years ago when an imaginative attempt to stage a League of Ireland match on the same bill as a challenge between then league holders Dublin and All-Ireland champions Down created such uproar that the plug was pulled.
Shamrock Rovers still played Bohemians but the GAA fixture didn’t go head and the RDS Affair passed into history.
Clanna Gael PRO Felix O’Regan says that the club is still reaching out to other sports.
“The executive of the club met recently and decided that this was a cause that all sports could support. We are in close proximity to the Aviva Stadium and also ours is a club that has not been shy about reaching across sporting divides in the past.
“We’ve been using our club grounds as a car parking facility for those going to the Aviva and it was decided that all takings from the car park, which will be manned by volunteers, will go to the Trust. The volunteers will also be wearing St Peter’s colours and taking up a collection around our club area.
“I was in contact with Michael O’Flynn, who helped to organise the Liam Miller tribute in Cork, and Fergus McNulty, currently the chair of St Peter’s in Dunboyne, who are on the organising committee and they helped out with the promotion as well as our Dublin players, Evan Caulfield (under-20 football) and Kate McKenna (All-Ireland football medallist and also a former cricket international).”
