15 year-old Newbridge schoolboy wins International Sporting Award

A young schoolboy from Newbridge has won one of soccer’s most important and coveted awards for underage players.

Shaun ‘Nuggie’ Hall, who is just 15 and from a well-known local business family, won Best Goalkeeper at the Le Havre U17 International tournament in France, playing for St. Pat’s Athletics.

The budding young star impressed some of soccer’s most accomplished players and managers, starting all five games against Scotland, Wales, France, Spain and Italy and playing out of his skin.

Jamie Moore from St. Pat’s praised the unassuming budding young star saying that he has all the qualities needed to succeed in the field of professional soccer.

“Nuggie is such an inspirational young fella; he is incredibly hard working, mentally strong and focussed, a true team player and he is happy to both lead and great too at taking direction. Being a goalie is a certain discipline and does take a special kind of person. It can be a very highly pressurised role but Nuggie rose to the occasion and did so with huge aplomb.”

“He played a blinder at Le Harve. He guarded that goalpost like a true leader, he wasn’t letting anything in and we were all absolutely delighted with his stellar display. Winning the’ Best Goalkeeper’ accolade was real recognition for his incredible work at the games and he was really up against it with lots of other excellent goalkeepers but he was way ahead of them.  He did himself and St. Pat’s proud”.

Shaun ‘Nuggie’ Hall is the son of Sean Hall, Managing Director of Manguard Plus.