Limerick Person of the Month: Hard work pays off for Treaty United

HAVING treated Limerick sports fans to a phoenix from the ashes-style performance last season, Treaty United FC have been named the Limerick Persons of the Month.

Accepting the award at Limerick's Clayton Hotel, Tommy Barrett, Treaty United men’s first team manager thanked all those who got behind the side which only began playing in the League of Ireland in 2021.

“We want to thank all the fans and supporters. As a club we are really appreciative of the award particularly in our first year. I think this would be more for the board members and all the players as well as the volunteer coaching staff in the background,” he says. 

Following the demise of Limerick FC, the need for a senior soccer side in Limerick was realised with the founding of Treaty United in 2020. 

The new club had the distinction of having a women's side before a men's - managing to get a team in the 2020 Women's National League, but not the League of Ireland.

They applied for a licence to enter the First Division in November 2020, but when the fixtures came out in early February 'TBC' [to be confirmed] was one of the teams. TBC eventually became Treaty, but not until 20 February - three days before their squad had to be finalised. The club exceeded nearly all expectations, finishing in the play-offs in November, where they lost to eventually promoted UCD.

Brave Treaty United lose out in dramatic promotion play-off tie

“A lot of good work has gone on behind the scenes,” continues Tommy, having taken a seat in the Clayton’s Grill Bar overlooking the Shannon.

“There are 10 members of the board there and they did a fantastic job last year. I know the senior team did it on the pitch but certainly, from an academy point of view, both in the underage women’s and men’s, they did fantastically well, particularly our U17s ladies who won the U17 National League which is a fantastic achievement for them.  We have eight teams now this year so we are growing again.” 

Dave Mahedy, the former director of sport and recreation at the University of Limerick, is the club’s director of football, and according to Tommy “we are hoping to link up with a local educational establishment in the next few weeks to partner with them”. 

“And we are always looking for more sponsorships as well. It’s a big cost, running eight teams now so we need that support. We got great support last year both on and off the field particularly with our membership programme and that’s going to be launched again soon.”

So what was the magic formula that saw the senior men’s side, a fully amateur squad that was pulled together just three days before the transfer deadline in February - vying for promotion to the top-flight of Irish football by November.

“The lads gelled well,” Tommy asserts. “They’re a good bunch of lads. They weren’t playing for money and I suppose that helped in many ways that they all knew that there was no one on professional contracts or big money. That helped in terms of team bonding.”

The team play their home matches at Markets Field. While Tommy points out that soccer is the most participated-in sport in the country, he says “it has been under funded for years”. 

“Originally it would probably have been a working-class sport and it wouldn’t have had the same amount of lobbying as the GAA and rugby - it would be political in that sense. We are definitely under funded by the government and I think that’s still true today. When you see that the greyhound industry - and no disrespect to the greyhound industry - and even less participated-in sports like rugby and the GAA get more money… but partly it’s because they have their house in order better as well - they are better run.  With the FAI in the last number of years, there have been controversies,” he points out. 

The Treaty United players don’t get paid. Does Tommy foresee that changing any time soon?

“I think we are off that yet,” he responds. “The vision and plan as a club is to grow our underage and to grow organically but we need to get our facilities right and cut down the costs. We are spending over €100,000 on facilities, or in and around that anyways, so that’s a big cost and we won’t be going professional I’d say until we can cut costs and get more money in.

“There are three full-time teams in our league now and they are probably full-time professionals in the First Division on an average wage of the mid-hundreds and some of them are probably close to 1,000 but it’s a short-term career. It’s fine for young lads to do that but you can imagine a 25 or 26-year-old is not going to give up a decent job and a career to play football for 400 or 500 quid because it is just not worth his while. Our lads still want to play at a high level. There are advantages and disadvantages to being professional and amateur. We are not going to get the recovery time in, like those lads do, but we would certainly train at a similar level.”