A SMALL, NONDESCRIPT concrete pitch in Dublin’s inner city seems an unlikely location for two Irish sporting greats and an ex-Premier League footballer to be spending a sunny Saturday morning.
Yet Olivia O’Toole, Kellie Harrington, and Keith Treacy are all here, as are many other members of the local community.
Daniel Ennis, the Social Democrats Councillor for Dublin North Inner City, has also shown up, as have a team from An Garda Síochána.
Less than two years after winning the second of back-to-back Olympic gold medals, Harrington is in the role of organiser, picking the teams, mixing easily with others in the community and politely making sure everyone is sorted for tea or coffee.
At 55, O’Toole — the Irish women’s team’s record goalscorer and their greatest ever player in the eyes of many aficionados — is still passionate as ever about playing.
She frequently gets involved in the five-a-sides and offers encouraging words to her younger teammates. The Dubliner may not move around the pitch as quickly as she once did, but her touch and spatial awareness still make her stand out from other equally enthusiastic participants.
Treacy gets involved too, at one point jokingly quipping that he was used to 15-minute breaks in the Premier League amid a quick turnaround between games.
Upbeat hip-hop and R’n'B music blasts from a nearby stereo, as people mainly in their teens and 20s, compete in this mini-tournament.
O’Toole has graced more prestigious venues during her illustrious career, but few can match the special value of The Strand, on Aldborough Place.
As a youngster, she spent endless hours practising there, improving her left and right feet by constantly kicking the ball against the wall, doing keepy-uppys and practising elaborate tricks.
Nowadays, those who go on to become professional footballers invariably learn their trade in academies, amid perfect playing surfaces and intensive coaching.
Maverick street footballers like O’Toole are a rare breed.
It is one of the reasons why she and everyone else mentioned above are backing a campaign to save The Strand pitch.
Dublin City Council are planning on demolishing the landmark that holds such importance for O’Toole and many others.
The proposal is to put up apartments in its place, and while the former Shamrock Rovers player understands the need to tackle Dublin’s housing crisis, she is hopeful a compromise can be reached.
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Wes Hoolahan, Pierce O’Leary and Troy Parrott are among the other stars who played on it growing up, and its disappearance could potentially block the pathway of other future young athletes.
But more importantly, on a practical level, the pitch has served as an escape for countless youngsters in need of distraction, often confronted with the harsh conditions growing up in the inner city entails.
“One thing that sticks out – it actually saved a lot of people during Covid, because it’s a closed area, and we were able to come up and play, do the boxing with Kellie, have a little session with Pierce,” O’Toole tells The 42.
“We used it consistently, because it was the only place we could actually come to work out, because the gyms were closed at the time.
“So it was very well used over the Covid, and that’s why we just don’t understand why DCC won’t come and have a discussion about the pitch and why we need it here.
“The planning has been accepted. So we’re trying to counteract, we’re trying to get DCC to talk to the community, talk to me, talk to Kellie, tell them that they can build the houses, but make sure that we keep the pitch.”
Harrington was not an avid soccer player growing up like O’Toole, but she still has fond memories of the area.
“I actually would have never played football on the pitch, but my brothers would have been playing on the pitch when I was growing up, and I would have been here on my bike, bringing my Barbie house around, dragging it from the house around to the back.
“And we’d be playing with our dolls on the side, while people are playing football on the pitch, and while someone is throwing a sliotar off the wall with a hurley. It’s a very multi-purpose pitch, and it’s always been like that.”
Kellie Harrington is among those backing the campaign to save The Strand pitch. Dan Clohessy / INPHO
Dan Clohessy / INPHO / INPHO
Harrington points out that the pitch is gated and can be locked, reducing the potential for anti-social behaviour.
“Nothing has ever been handed to anybody in the inner city,” she adds. “We all fight for it. We grow up seeing things we shouldn’t see, and our families and communities help guide us down the right road, so we don’t go down the road of what we’re seeing. Having stuff like this helps us to stay on the right pathway.
“[Growing up here] hardens you. But this here is what brings communities together. If you look around, there are so many people talking to each other who probably haven’t talked to each other before, who haven’t spoken to each other in months. That’s what this is for. This is community engagement.”
In addition to recreational events like the one Harrington and O’Toole are participating in, local boxing clubs often use it for fitness sessions, circuit training and bleep tests.
“What this pitch does is it saves people,” says Harrington. “It helps people to get rid of any excess energy that they have, which allows them then to go home to be able to concentrate on what they need to concentrate on — that might be college work, school work, work in general. So it helps people, not just in sport, but in their everyday life, keeps them out of trouble.
“It’s not like we’re not trying to keep the pitch open to try and find the next Olympic champion or the next FAI player, that’s a bonus.
“We’re trying to keep this open, to save more people’s lives, to save them from going down the wrong pathway in life.
“It sticks in the back of my mind what Olivia said a couple of months ago. This pitch, when you look at that wall up there, people just look at that and think it’s just a wall. That wall probably saved Olivia O’Toole’s life. Coming in on her own, and doing touches off the wall.”
O’Toole adds: “I’m coming to this pitch at least 30 years every Saturday morning. Just have a little kick about with kids, and make sure that everyone is getting involved. I’m using it now with Kellie for the last 10 years, and we’ve always done sessions on football, boxing, karate, and basketball.
“I came to the pitch, and it taught me street football, but you don’t see it very often.
“This is where you get the street football. This is where you get the Maradonas, the Peles, the Ronaldos, they’re all street footballers.
“And to me, that kills me, that you go into housing estates now, and there’s a cul-de-sac, and the first sign you see is ‘no football’.
“So how are we going to produce street footballers if you’re not allowed to play on the streets?”
She continues: “What you see now when you walk through Dublin is bunches of kids standing on corners, selling drugs. And this is what we don’t want, and this is why we go around, and we say: ‘Come on in and have a game. And once they get that little sport, and they get a passion for it, they don’t go back on the streets.
“I mean, I didn’t know I could play football, I didn’t know I could box, but you bring them on the pitch, and some of the talent is unbelievable.
“We are going to produce the next Kellie Harrington, the next Olivia O’Toole, the next Troy Parrott here someday.”
While there are no signs of DCC relaxing its stance on the matter, Harrington says she and her fellow campaigners are not giving up the fight.
“We are going to go right up to the wire with this. So if we need to go to the high court with it, that’s exactly where we’ll be going.
“We’re not going to back out anytime soon. And we have support from a lot of people. And if we do get the go-ahead to keep the pitch, we have people there who want to fund it, help us make the pitch better, put in a good playground and resurface it. So we have everything sorted basically, we just need to get the go-ahead from An Bord Pleanála.
“This needs to stay for children’s mental health and well-being, and for adults’ mental health, physical health and well-being.
“Every child in the inner city deserves the space to be able to practice physical and mental well-being.”
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'What this pitch does is it saves people' - the battle to save Dublin's great football nursery
A SMALL, NONDESCRIPT concrete pitch in Dublin’s inner city seems an unlikely location for two Irish sporting greats and an ex-Premier League footballer to be spending a sunny Saturday morning.
Yet Olivia O’Toole, Kellie Harrington, and Keith Treacy are all here, as are many other members of the local community.
Daniel Ennis, the Social Democrats Councillor for Dublin North Inner City, has also shown up, as have a team from An Garda Síochána.
Less than two years after winning the second of back-to-back Olympic gold medals, Harrington is in the role of organiser, picking the teams, mixing easily with others in the community and politely making sure everyone is sorted for tea or coffee.
At 55, O’Toole — the Irish women’s team’s record goalscorer and their greatest ever player in the eyes of many aficionados — is still passionate as ever about playing.
She frequently gets involved in the five-a-sides and offers encouraging words to her younger teammates. The Dubliner may not move around the pitch as quickly as she once did, but her touch and spatial awareness still make her stand out from other equally enthusiastic participants.
Treacy gets involved too, at one point jokingly quipping that he was used to 15-minute breaks in the Premier League amid a quick turnaround between games.
Upbeat hip-hop and R’n'B music blasts from a nearby stereo, as people mainly in their teens and 20s, compete in this mini-tournament.
O’Toole has graced more prestigious venues during her illustrious career, but few can match the special value of The Strand, on Aldborough Place.
As a youngster, she spent endless hours practising there, improving her left and right feet by constantly kicking the ball against the wall, doing keepy-uppys and practising elaborate tricks.
Nowadays, those who go on to become professional footballers invariably learn their trade in academies, amid perfect playing surfaces and intensive coaching.
Maverick street footballers like O’Toole are a rare breed.
It is one of the reasons why she and everyone else mentioned above are backing a campaign to save The Strand pitch.
Dublin City Council are planning on demolishing the landmark that holds such importance for O’Toole and many others.
The proposal is to put up apartments in its place, and while the former Shamrock Rovers player understands the need to tackle Dublin’s housing crisis, she is hopeful a compromise can be reached.
Wes Hoolahan, Pierce O’Leary and Troy Parrott are among the other stars who played on it growing up, and its disappearance could potentially block the pathway of other future young athletes.
But more importantly, on a practical level, the pitch has served as an escape for countless youngsters in need of distraction, often confronted with the harsh conditions growing up in the inner city entails.
“One thing that sticks out – it actually saved a lot of people during Covid, because it’s a closed area, and we were able to come up and play, do the boxing with Kellie, have a little session with Pierce,” O’Toole tells The 42.
“We used it consistently, because it was the only place we could actually come to work out, because the gyms were closed at the time.
“So it was very well used over the Covid, and that’s why we just don’t understand why DCC won’t come and have a discussion about the pitch and why we need it here.
“The planning has been accepted. So we’re trying to counteract, we’re trying to get DCC to talk to the community, talk to me, talk to Kellie, tell them that they can build the houses, but make sure that we keep the pitch.”
Harrington was not an avid soccer player growing up like O’Toole, but she still has fond memories of the area.
“I actually would have never played football on the pitch, but my brothers would have been playing on the pitch when I was growing up, and I would have been here on my bike, bringing my Barbie house around, dragging it from the house around to the back.
“And we’d be playing with our dolls on the side, while people are playing football on the pitch, and while someone is throwing a sliotar off the wall with a hurley. It’s a very multi-purpose pitch, and it’s always been like that.”
Harrington points out that the pitch is gated and can be locked, reducing the potential for anti-social behaviour.
“Nothing has ever been handed to anybody in the inner city,” she adds. “We all fight for it. We grow up seeing things we shouldn’t see, and our families and communities help guide us down the right road, so we don’t go down the road of what we’re seeing. Having stuff like this helps us to stay on the right pathway.
“[Growing up here] hardens you. But this here is what brings communities together. If you look around, there are so many people talking to each other who probably haven’t talked to each other before, who haven’t spoken to each other in months. That’s what this is for. This is community engagement.”
In addition to recreational events like the one Harrington and O’Toole are participating in, local boxing clubs often use it for fitness sessions, circuit training and bleep tests.
“What this pitch does is it saves people,” says Harrington. “It helps people to get rid of any excess energy that they have, which allows them then to go home to be able to concentrate on what they need to concentrate on — that might be college work, school work, work in general. So it helps people, not just in sport, but in their everyday life, keeps them out of trouble.
“It’s not like we’re not trying to keep the pitch open to try and find the next Olympic champion or the next FAI player, that’s a bonus.
“We’re trying to keep this open, to save more people’s lives, to save them from going down the wrong pathway in life.
“It sticks in the back of my mind what Olivia said a couple of months ago. This pitch, when you look at that wall up there, people just look at that and think it’s just a wall. That wall probably saved Olivia O’Toole’s life. Coming in on her own, and doing touches off the wall.”
O’Toole adds: “I’m coming to this pitch at least 30 years every Saturday morning. Just have a little kick about with kids, and make sure that everyone is getting involved. I’m using it now with Kellie for the last 10 years, and we’ve always done sessions on football, boxing, karate, and basketball.
“I came to the pitch, and it taught me street football, but you don’t see it very often.
“This is where you get the street football. This is where you get the Maradonas, the Peles, the Ronaldos, they’re all street footballers.
“And to me, that kills me, that you go into housing estates now, and there’s a cul-de-sac, and the first sign you see is ‘no football’.
“So how are we going to produce street footballers if you’re not allowed to play on the streets?”
She continues: “What you see now when you walk through Dublin is bunches of kids standing on corners, selling drugs. And this is what we don’t want, and this is why we go around, and we say: ‘Come on in and have a game. And once they get that little sport, and they get a passion for it, they don’t go back on the streets.
“I mean, I didn’t know I could play football, I didn’t know I could box, but you bring them on the pitch, and some of the talent is unbelievable.
“We are going to produce the next Kellie Harrington, the next Olivia O’Toole, the next Troy Parrott here someday.”
While there are no signs of DCC relaxing its stance on the matter, Harrington says she and her fellow campaigners are not giving up the fight.
“We are going to go right up to the wire with this. So if we need to go to the high court with it, that’s exactly where we’ll be going.
“We’re not going to back out anytime soon. And we have support from a lot of people. And if we do get the go-ahead to keep the pitch, we have people there who want to fund it, help us make the pitch better, put in a good playground and resurface it. So we have everything sorted basically, we just need to get the go-ahead from An Bord Pleanála.
“This needs to stay for children’s mental health and well-being, and for adults’ mental health, physical health and well-being.
“Every child in the inner city deserves the space to be able to practice physical and mental well-being.”
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Boxing Campaign Interview kellie harrington Olivia O'Toole Pitch Soccer The Strand