“We want to give girls a love of the game so that even if they don’t make it, they can become coaches and give back to the next generation.”

The chair of Castletown Belles, a trailblazing girls soccer club based in Dundalk, says Ireland’s Euro 2025 qualifier against England last Friday and tonight’s game against the French in Cork are potential catalysts to get more talented young female footballers into the game.   

Castletown Belles is one of a small number of female-only soccer clubs in Ireland, and the only soccer club exclusively for girls in Co. Louth.  It has just been nominated as a National Finalist in the Sport category of the 2024 National Lottery Good Causes Awards.

“To learn, you’ve got to see the big teams and big players play. Having the women’s game on TV is great for girls. England are arguably the best team on the planet right now. And when young girls see our Irish superstars holding their own against them, it’s got to inspire them to aim for the green jersey,” says Chair Andrew Gallagher, following the game in Wembley on Friday last and ahead of the the France game at Páirc Uí Chaoimh today (July 16).

Castletown Belles has found strength in numbers in recent years. With 110 members across eight teams from U7 to U16 level, a permanent lease on a pitch in Dundalk, and €43,000 in a Sports Capital Grant, part funded by National Lottery, including new dressing rooms and a boundary fence around the home pitch, its future appears bright and secure. 

The credit for this success, Andrew says, is due to his father, Niall Gallagher, the founder and chairman of the club until his death from cancer in November 2023. 

“At the time the club was founded in 2016, the only team sport for girls in Dundalk was Gaelic football. If a girl wanted to play soccer, they had to go to Oriel Park to play for Dundalk or to Dublin to play with Shelbourne. We could see there was a big gap there for a team in the North-East and my father was adamant there was an appetite for one among the people here,” says Andrew. 

The club initially started as a senior ladies’ team and entered the Dublin Women’s Soccer League. However, the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic proved disruptive to the team, compelling Niall and Andrew to broaden their offering to girls aged four and above. The club’s new remit re-focused their minds on improving its facilities. 

“We always said that if we were going to do it, we wanted it done right. We didn’t want our girls, girls from the opposing teams, or parents, worrying about basic stuff like bathrooms. After we secured the lease on the pitch, the very first thing we did was get a local county council grant to put in toilets. Most of the time opposing teams can’t believe that we even have toilet facilities,” says the 39-year-old.

In 2020, the club submitted a proposal for a sports capital grant to install boundary fencing and dressing rooms. The success of the application and the realisation of the proposal for new facilities stands, he says, as his father’s legacy.

“All of it was his idea and he pushed for it all the way to the end of his life. A condition of the sports capital grant is that your organisation needs to self-fund 10% of the cost of the project. At the time, my father was on his death bed and he was calling local business people to lobby them for a bridging loan. Two weeks after he passed away, all the material arrive on-site for the construction. The field is right outside my house. His granddaughters play for the club. It’s a fantastic legacy,” says the father-of-two. 

Andrew continues: “He was right about lots of things that we disagreed on. For example, in 2013 I had a health issue and required a kidney transplant. When we got our first set of jerseys, he was determined to put the Kidney Association of Ireland on the front. I suppose, ironically, I was against the idea because I thought we could do with the money from a sponsor, but he knew better and sure enough, we got lots of attention for it.”

Ireland’s Euro 2025 qualification campaign may have failed to fire, with four defeats from four games and seven goals conceded, but Andrew and the girls of Castletown Belles are focused on the bigger picture. 

“We don’t put on training or games when the matches are on because we’re conscious that a lot of girls don’t really sit down and watch the game on TV. We want to encourage that. Last year, for the World Cup, we built a summer camp around Ireland’s opening game against Australia and brought 70 girls into a local school hall to watch it,” he says. 

“This area has produced a lot of quality female footballers. Megan Campbell, Ireland’s centre-half, is from up the road in Drogheda and we have her signed jersey on the wall in the dressing room. We want to inspire these girls and give them a love of the game so that, even if they don’t make it to the top, they can stay involved, become coaches and give back to the next generation.”

Castletown Belles was recently announced as a National Finalist in this year's National Lottery  Good  Causes  Awards. The awards aim to honour, showcase and celebrate the inspiring work being carried out nationwide by thousands of projects, clubs and individuals who have received support from Good Causes funding. 

 Out of the many deserving causes, 35 National Finalists have been selected across seven categories. Each of the National Finalists receive a cheque of €1,000 and will attend the Good Causes Awards Gala event later this year in Killashee House Hotel where the overall winner of each category will be named with a chance to win €10,000 and a further €25,000 for Overall Good Cause of the Year.

Nearly 30 cent in every €1 spent on all National Lottery games goes back to Good Causes in the areas of sport, youth, health, welfare, education, arts, heritage, and the Irish Language. In total more than €6 Billion has been raised for Good Causes since the National Lottery was established 36 years ago. In 2022 alone, €259.5 Million was raised for local Good Causes in communities across Ireland.               

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