Development
Over the past two years the Club has been implementing a three stage development plan to bring our facilities to the highest standard while maintaining and expanding our activities on the pitch.
The three stages of the facilities plan have been:
1. Development of new playing surfaces.
2. Floodlighting of our main grass pitch.
Playing Surfaces
As part of the Steeplechase development, at Skryne Road, Ratoath, the Club has been fortunate to secure a long-term lease on four acres from McGarrell Reilly Developments. This area has been developed over 2004 and 2005 to include two new full-sized pitches. This important new playing resource will allow us to better manage our existing facilities, reducing excessive wear and tear on them, while giving us extra capacity to deal with our rapidly increasing membership numbers.
Because this area was originally part of Clover Hill Farm, we have named these pitches Clover Hill 1 and Clover Hill 2.
On the other side of the Skryne Road, at Ratoath Park, our existing all-weather floodlit Astroplay five-a-side pitches are constantly in use seven days a week. In addition at this site, we have developed one full-sized grass pitch, a seven-a-side grass pitch, and a grass training area as well as changing rooms and parking area.
Also on this side of the Skryne Road, as part of the Coderlios area of the village, we have our Barrack Field pitch. This pitch has been our "home" venue for many years since its development in the early 1970s and completes our total of four full sized grass pitches. At this venue, we have also developed dressing rooms and shower facilities, and a further floodlit grass training area.
The Barrack Field, at the Coderlios, Ratoath.
We decided early on to develop our playing surfaces to a very high standard, and our grass pitches are noted for their resilience to adverse weather conditions, with the result that we are rarely "rained out" for our home fixtures.
This policy was maintained with the development of our Astroplay facility. The Ratoath Harps installation was only the second installation in Europe of a revolutionary new style of synthetic playing carpet material. We particularly enjoy the fact that subsequent installations of this material occurred at Manchester United, Real Madrid and other prominent international soccer clubs.
The introduction to play of Clover Hill 1 and 2 in the summer of 2006 marked the completion of this phase of the development agenda.
Floodlighting
In 2005 we installed a floodlighting system to our main grass pitch at Ratoath Park.
This has proved a huge success with our First and Second teams' home games being played under lights on Friday evenings.
A welcome additional benefit is the freeing up of the pitches this allows for on Saturdays and Sundays, relieving pressure on the playing surfaces (and on the fixtures secretaries!)
The lighting system is designed to the UK Nationwide League standard and the innovative lamp design minimises light "spill".
The successful commissioning of this lighting system marked the completion of phase 2 of the development plan.
Clubhouse
Phase 3 of our development plan concerns our intention to build a new Clubhouse at Ratoath Park to serve the needs of our membership.
Design and planning stages have been completed.
This year we will install sewage and water and implement a temporary solution for toilet facilities. This year also we will also concentrate on putting in place the majority of the funding required for the Clubhouse project.
It is our intention to prefund at least 50% of the project cost to increase our prospects of obtaining Lottery and County Council amenity grants. We plan to begin construction in mid-2007.
Click on the following links to view floor plans and elevations. If you experience difficulty opening the links it may be because they contain Adobe Acrobat files.
Download Acrobat Reader free here: Download Adobe Acrobat