Burglars strike at local GAA club

Burglars strike at local GAA club

12 March 2014

BURGLARS caused damage of up to £10,000 to Bryansford GAC clubhouse during an early morning raid on Monday.

Several volunteers from the club missed work on Monday to help with a massive clean-up operation in the clubhouse that was ransacked in the early morning raid.

A sum of cash was taken and cash registers and alarm system were wrecked in the incident, which has shocked the local community. The cash register was recovered in the nearby Burren River.

Club members, who are hopeful that those responsible have been caught on CCTV, have reacted angrily to the break-in and have expressed their shock at early estimates that damage of up to £10,000 has been caused.

Bryansford club chairman, Mr. Ronan McVeigh, said he considered those responsible “thugs with no respect to the work the Bryansford Club does in the local community.”

He said the break-in had marred a celebratory weekend for the club with the senior side reaching the Ulster League semi-finals.

“What was a good weekend for the club has been somewhat soured by this but we will bounce back and be the better for it,” he said.

“It is a shame but these things happen.

“What makes it difficult to accept is that fact that we are a voluntary organisation.”

He said the burglary was the first incident in the club for about seven years and said there were concerns that youths had recently returned to drinking and causing anti social behaviour in the stands at weekends.

However, he said club members had been reassured by the PSNI that this area will be monitored more with immediate effect.

He said he was hoped that the support and swift action of the PSNI and fellow club members meant those responsible will be brought before the courts.

Local councillor Willie Clarke has condemned those responsible for breaking into the club and extended his sympathies to the club and their members.

“Bryansford GAC is an organisation embedded in the community and has been doing great work in the local area for many generations.

“For anyone to target such an upstanding community-based organisation is absolutely disgraceful.

“The facilities at the club are often used by a wide-ranging amount of local groups and I know that the condemnation throughout the local area will be widespread at a time when sporting groups are hard pressed for funding.”