Leave a legacy’ was the slogan for the referendum of 2016 to get these brand new state of the art facilities across the line.
Maguires Pitches is the first in a series to be completed and opened on Tuesday at UL by UL Student Life President Jack Scanlan, Deputy President, Chief Operating Officer, and Registrar, Gerry O’Brien and outgoing UL Director Sport and Recreation Dave Mahedy.
The massive new state-of-the-art €7 million sports facility is free to use by current and future students and can hold a huge varied amount of field sports.
At the opening on Tuesday we seen a great exhibition of various sports from our UL Wolves Clubs including:
- Tag Rugby
- Ultimate Frisbee
- Hurling
- Football
- & Archery
UL Student Life President Jack Scanlan said: “This facility is going to be first and foremost for the students of UL. This project has been student-led from its inception and students are contributing the majority of the funding for the project through the student levy.
“The 2016 campaign was centered on the theme of UL students leaving a legacy. The legacy UL students are going to leave with this amazing facility will extend far beyond the future students of UL and into the local communities who will use the facility for years to come.
“Without the students of UL this facility would not exist in the way we see it today,” the UL Student Life President added.
“This is the perfect exemplar of how a student-led project can yield truly magnificent results,” said Gerry O’Brien, Deputy President of UL.
“At a cost of €7 million, our state-of-the-art sports campus has been enhanced further with the completion of this project and reaffirms our status as Ireland’s sporting campus and one of the best in Europe.
“Together with the students who have gone before and the students who will come after, they are all key in how this University and this campus is shaped and continues to move forward,” Mr O’Brien said.
Outgoing UL Director Sport and Recreation Dave Mahedy said it was an “amazing” facility and to see it launched was the “pinnacle” of his UL career.
“It is something you plan for and it takes years and years. It makes it even more special because of the persistence,” he explained. “This is just fantastic, this finishes off – we are an excellent University as far as sport is concerned, but this just tops it off.
“I am particularly enamoured with the grass pitch, because, now for the first time in our history, we can play Fitzgibbon cup games, Ashbourne, Sigerson – at night, under lights, with a terrace, which was one thing that was missing for years.
Maguires Pitches themselves include:
The Leave a legacy project includes the following:
- The construction of a brand new centre for students,
- The renovation of Maguire’s training pitches, two new multi-purpose, all-weather pitches,
- A climbing wall,
- A handball alley,
- A 25m diving pool
- The restoration of one particular area of the University’s indoor sport’s facilities.
Some images of Maguires Opening day
