By Gary Ferry

Northern Ireland football legend Pat Jennings was the star guest at St. Columb’s College on Saturday as hundreds of local footballers participated in a McDonald’s Festival of football, hosted by Foyle Games Development Centre.

The former Arsenal and Tottenham goalkeeper has long been an advocate of youth football and he wasted no time in praising the organisation of the event on Saturday, which gave upwards of 280 young girls and boys the opportunity to strut their stuff in a healthy and fun-filled atmosphere.

“Especially when you see the amount of teams involved, it’s brilliant, absolutely brilliant,” Jennings told the Derry News.

“I wish we had something like this in our day. You have to see it to believe it. There’s something like 1100 kids involved here in the Derry area which is incredible. You can imagine what those kids would be doing at home without football. It brings everybody together and the coaches do a fantastic job as well; without them there is no grassroots football, not just in Derry but throughout the country. The amount of work they do looking after the kids is brilliant.”

Jennings sees a big difference in opportunities these days from when he was younger, and he is delighted that the game has developed now to become all inclusive.

“The skill of the kids is so much better now than it was in our day,” he continued.

“We would never have this amount of kids involved. There was probably just a few teams from your area and that was it. I started playing U19 league when I was 11 but because there was a lack of soccer facilities it only ran for one year, so I then played gaelic football. I really enjoyed that as well, which is really what sport is about to everybody. It’s also lovely to see the girls involved. Football today is for everybody whereas in the olds days it was frowned upon girls playing soccer. It’s great to see now.

“There will be loads of these kids now who will hopefully make it through and become professional. In our day you were very lucky if you got away but you can see loads of these now and they have been scouted all over the place so hopefully it will make both of our Ireland teams all the better.”

Mayor of Derry and Strabane Maoiliosa McHugh was also in attendance at Saturday’s event.

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