Let there be light: Ladies football team fighting for floodlights

A Co Tyrone football club is being left in the dark over a lack of floodlights at its pitch.

Swifts Ladies and Girls FC is unable to play matches at Strabane’s Melvin Sports Complex due to a lack of floodlighting at its grass pitch, a club representative has told the local council.

During a deputation to Derry City and Strabane District Council members, Sion’s Simon Canning noted the club had a ‘massive reach for such a small community club,’ with over 170 players, across ten different teams, and 25 volunteer coaches.

Mr Canning also noted that the women’s game has been growing exponentially, with a 613% increase in Northern Irish players registered by the Irish Football Association since 2019.

The club itself, established back in 2010, has had significant achievements in that short period, Mr Canning said.

“And we’ve had a host of international players come through the doors from all sorts of backgrounds, so we definitely punch above our weight.”

He said that the women’s game turned professional in 2023, and while the synthetic pitch at Melvin was permitted for matches since then for a transitionary period, that period had now ended.

An adjoining grass pitch at the complex is fit for purpose, but requires floodlights as the club’s matches are predominantly played in the evenings.

Mr Canning added: “Melvin Arena pitch is a stone’s throw away [and while] there’s floodlights on the Astroturf there’s not on the grass pitch, so I think it’s a fair request for that to be looked at.”

Director of Health and Communities, Karen McFarland, said officers would bring back a paper for the council’s capital Working Group in relation to potential costs for floodlighting.

She concluded: “In terms of external funding this is one of the projects that we scoped out to go to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport/The Irish Football Association’s Grassroot Funding Programme and they excluded floodlighting from that particular fund.

“There is perhaps something that might be done, in terms of the club and members collectively, looking at how we might influence any future decisions.”