Limerick club appeals for return of long-lost youth cup

A NORTHSIDE soccer club has appealed for information on a long-lost junior trophy, from a competition last contested in the early 1990s.

Ballynanty Rovers are seeking to regain the Michael O’Donnell trophy, with member Jerome Henry, Thomondgate, believing a club member may have it and has just forgotten about it.

“We don't know who won it last or where it has been. We would be very grateful and love to have the cup returned,” he said.

“I believe one of our own might have it. I think we were the last to win it in our own tournament which we used to run every year. Someone might have it in the shed or something and just forgotten about it. But we’d like them to hand it back, it’s important to us,” he said.

The trophy itself is small, he said, measuring only three-quarters of a foot.

But they would like to bring back the Michael O’Donnell tournament to be contested in pre-season ​for schoolboy soccer sides in Limerick.

The trophy was named after Ballynanty Rovers man Michael O’Donnell, who sadly died in a car accident in the 1980s aged just 31 years.

Jerome said: “It would be nice to have it. It was the O'Donnell family and Ballynanty who bought the trophy. Michael O'Donnell played with Ballynanty all his life. He was involved in a tragic accident, he was killed in a car crash. He was aged just 31 or 32 at the time. He had a big family and all of them were Ballynanty Rovers people.”

He said Ballynanty Rovers will re-run the tournament one Saturday before the regular season commences, alongside another tournament in honour of fellow club stalwart Tony McMahon, who died in 2012.

If you have any information on the trophy, please telephone Jerome at 087-7915677.

Alternatively, you can look up Ballynanty Rovers on Facebook.