Last weekend saw the staging of another very successful 5th Annual   Fantasy Cheltenham run by Erin s Own GAA club. This novel fundraiser is now known and played the length and breath of Ireland by participating Clubs, organisations and charities. It’s popularity has placed Erins Own GAA at the very top of novel fundraisers that clubs wish to be involved in. With participants from twenty counties around Ireland and up to fifteen neighbouring clubs this is indeed a great fun way for clubs to generate much needed income to run their clubs and organisations.

This hardworking committee have been meeting for many months leading up to the festival. Groups of club volunteers headed all over the Country selling and promoting the idea to interested clubs. When the flag fell on the first days racing last Tuesday, in excess of 5,000 people had signed up to play Fantasy Cheltenham 2014 and the chance to win 10,000 euro over the four days of Cheltenham. One of major positive decisions the committee made was to move our call centre to the Enterprise Centre and this proved to be a masterstroke. With up to twenty five volunteers per day on duty on behalf of our club, the comfort of the premises, computer network services available and canteen facilities etc made this the ideal location to run this event from.

A special word of thanks to Mr. Martin Carroll, The centre Manager whose help all week was of the highest order and contributed to the success of the event. Fantasy Cheltenham 2014  was an outstanding success on every level and generated a substantial sum for our club and the new development of new Dressing Rooms, Showers, Public Toilets, Machinery Shed, Ball Wall and extensive Gym that has now commenced in Ballycomey. When completed this will add significantly to the present facilities that the club enjoys. A special word of thanks to all the parents of our juvenile members who gave up their time to help run the centre during the week, students from Castlecomer Community School for their efforts and the Management group who run Fantasy Cheltenham. Plans will shortly be put in place for Fantasy Cheltenham 2015 and until then thanks to all our own members who also bought and played the game.

Well done to all.