O'NEILL'S FOYLE CUP 2024 - The Ryan McBride Foundation to the rescue!

A team of young stars banded together this week for the first time ever to rescue the Foyle Cup in the name of former Derry City captain Ryan McBride.

Organisers of this year’s competition reached out on Sunday in the hope that a void in the U12 section could be filled at the last minute. It was a real shot in the dark with less than 24 hours’ notice, but it worked nonetheless, although in an unpredictable way.

Gareth McCay, from the Ryan McBride Foundation, saw the appeal and, with a matter of hours, thanks to the magic of social media, he had uncovered a team of no fewer than 20 footballers from Derry. Donegal and beyond willing to help out.

“I kind of clocked it about 2pm on Sunday, and I just said to the board, do you think we can do it?”, he explained. “Our coaches are off during the summer so we also needed someone to take the team, but we thought we could get something sorted. We put it onto Facebook to see what sort of response we could get and it went from there.

“There were responses from all different parts of the country and different reasons why people weren't playing, from boys and girls. We released then by about 4 o'clock, that we had about 20 so we contacted the Foyle Cup Committee and said “Look, we have a team if we can still enter”.

“It worked out really well. We have a fair size of reach on social media, we have about 15,000 followers so word got around very quickly and social media did its thing as they say.”

Paul O’Donnell, Sean Cassidy and Stephen McCallion agreed to coach the team at the last minute, and with Phoenix Athletic providing the kit, the new team was good to go for their first, impromptu training session on the morning of their first ever game.

It all came together so quickly.

“I thought it would be tight going, and I suppose you just don't realise how many players weren't getting a game or had been left out, or hadn't been playing football for a while, or had fallen away from it,” Gareth explained.

“Some people's clubs just didn't put teams in this year, or couldn't get enough players together so I certainly didn't appreciate how many wains were missing out because you think everybody's getting a game at this point.

“I was very surprised by the number of responses and how quickly they came in but it just shows you too, there's obviously a lot of people who are very keen to play as well. It was a last-minute winner for many of the parents as well, to get them in somewhere.”

“Clooney messaged to say that they're delighted because their boys were in our group and they wouldn't have had a match on the Monday if we hadn't put a team in. So, it's not just our wee group getting in and playing, it actually ended up that there were an extra three matches that wouldn't have been played so it means there were 60 wains really getting in and playing that wouldn't have been otherwise.”

The Foyle Cup is designed to make memories, and few will forget how the Ryan McBride Foundation pulled this one out of the bag at the last minute providing young footballers with the opportunity to show their worth on a big stage – Ryan himself would have been very proud of that.

“They'd never met each other on Monday, they didn't even know each other's names,” Gareth stated. “They were just all shouting ‘hi’. It was a wee bit of a razzmatazz at the start against Clooney. They didn't really know what was going on but when they got themselves together and they acquitted themselves quite well.

“They were a wee bit more organised and more at themselves when they played St Pats on Tuesday up in Castlederg and they drew 3-3 and some of the goals were brilliant. They then lost to a very strong Coleraine team, but it was no disgrace. We are trying to get everyone a game and it just shows how quickly everyone has pulled together.”