Sports clubs in Donegal woke up to devastation this morning with pitches and facilities destroyed by overnight flooding.
The Dunree Boxing Club’s saw their home, just outside Buncrana, ‘totally wrecked’ and the club now faces closure (Pic, Caroline McGonagle)
The adjoining Celtic Park, one of Cockhill Celtic’s pitches, was also badly damaged in the flooding, the worst to hit the county in years, where even an open-back lorry was swept onto the pitch having been parked in a yard next door.
Dunree BC coach Fergal Doyle went to visit the scene this morning.
“The placed is just totally destroyed, totally wrecked,” he said as he surveyed the damage.
“Most of our equipment is gone down the river. It’s a disaster. The water was as high as the goalposts on the football field, the owner of the shed was able to tell us. We had a treadmill carried 60 metres away. We have a ring inside that 30 men wouldn’t lift and it was just moved as if it was a football being kicked away. That’s just the force of nature.”
The club just returned to training on Monday night with around 25 young boxers in attendance.
Last night, the brick walls of the club’s base crumbled under the weight of the gushing tide.
Pic. Leo McColgan, Cockhill Celtic
Doyle said: “The flow of water came in at one end and just had to get out. It just tumbled everything in its way, including the block walls. The steel girders are still standing, but the block walls were just taken down. It was just a good thing we had no-one here training. It was bad, but it could have been a lot worse.”
Dunree moved to the base around two years ago and were looking forward to the new season.
Doyle said: “Anything we had, we had paid for and raised money for. In the space of six hours, we have lost the lot. We’ll be out of action now for God knows how long.
“Hopefully we can get something in the interim, we’ll look around to see what we can do. It’s a disaster.”
The Crana River rose to rarely-before-seen levels last night.
Cockhill Celtic’s Celtic Park bore the brunt of the rising tide, which swept all sorts of debris onto the surface. The lorry, which had been parked next to the boxing club, was carried by the water onto the pitch.
“It was just devastation there this morning,” Cockhill Celtic PRO Dermot O’Donnell said.
“We had backfilled there with rocks and had concreted the rocks in. We raised it about four feet so I’d say the river was up about eight feet, or maybe more. Sand, gravel, all sorts, was lying on it.
“All the ball stops and the fencing along the perimeter of the pitch is gone
“It got a bad touch and it’s a busy time of year for us. We have three senior teams, one in the Ulster Senior League and two in the Inishowen League. It’ll be a few days, at least, before we can even begin a clean up. The pitch will have to settle and dry out before we can touch it. It might take a few months to get it back where we can play on it again,”
Pic: Leo McColgan, Cockhill Celtic
Cockhill’s third pitch, situated on the opposite side of the river, was also badly flooded last night.
O’Donnell said: “It’s under water, too, but we’re lucky that we have the main pitch and the astro, which are on high enough ground that they weren’t effected.”
Inishowen League club Sea Rovers’ ground at Gortnamullin was submerged.
Several grounds were beneath water, among them St Johnston Cricket Club’s ground at the Railway Road, which took the overflowing Foyle’s waters overnight and seems likely to be out of commission for a time..
St Johnston Cricket Club
