Club History

“Who’s that team they call the Celtic?
Who’s that team we all adore?
We’re the Bhoys in emerald green
and the best you’ve ever seen before”

First Shoots

Many of our present club members will be familiar with the words of the popular ballad as they ring out normally in celebration of a victory. But how many of us know exactly when and how our Club was founded and who were the early pioneers of association football in Trim.  It is commonly known that the present Club is not the original Trim Celtic but very little is recorded about those men to whom we, the present members owe a great debt of gratitude. In this short article we would like to briefly recall some of those who paved the way for the very fine Club that we now enjoy.

The present Club is in fact the third Trim Celtic. The second Club spanned the 1950’s but the earliest Club dates back to before World War II. A founder member of the original Club was John Bligh of Clonbun who told of how he was present at the original meeting held in the Town Hall. In a theme common to some of the biggest & oldest football clubs in the world this first club was established when a group of local cricketers, seeking an alternative sporting outlet for the winter months, introduced football  to the town of Trim for the first time. Fund were raised through the holding of dances in the Legion Hall (admission 1/6d!)

Understandable support for the move was very limited at the time and a genuine love of the game sustained the effort for several years before ‘War stopped play’. Some of his playing colleagues on that early team were the Loughran brothers, Willie and Frank, Paddy Bray, Sean Little, Bill Allen, Nick Carthy, Ned Frawley. Another of them, ‘Ginger’ Plunket he considered to be one of the best all-round footballers the County had ever seen and by all accounts
numerous Dublin clubs courted his signature. The team in thos days played their football in the ‘Prient’s Field’, the site of the present St. Mary’s
Convent Primary School, also called Celtic Park .

Shortly after the outbreak of War in 1939 the club disbanded only to form again five years after the end of the war.

Second Coming

Again it was from the cricket community that the second initiative came and this time Ned Frawly and John McEvoy were two of the principal men at the helm. The second club played their football mainly where Tower View estate has been built and Luke Fagan, a member of the team gave an account of their first ever Leinster League Novice Division game played by the Club. ‘A missed penalty cost us a winning start to our League career and the game ended scoreless’. Those were the days when bustling centre-forwards like John McEvoy delivered ball, goalkeeper and anyones lese unfortunate enough to be in the way into the net with the full support of the referee. Luke recalled that training sessions in those days consisted of a brisk jog out to Kilbride and back followed by an hours workout in the loft behind Brogan’s Hotel. Teddy Frawley of Athboy Gate recalled how the entire team, reserves and officials often arrived in Dublin courtesy of Jimmy McLoughlin’s black sedan car. John McEvoy tells of a super Cup tie played before a large crown on Ballyfermot lawns when a number of goals were disallowed by a referee who openly admitted that neither he nor the Trim visitors would get out alive if the ‘culchies’ won.

Third & Present Club

The demise of the second Club occurred around 1960 and several of the members at the time were responsible for the founding of the present Club in 1967. The motivation on this occassion came from Christy Ginnerty, Paddy Finnegan, Frank Melia, Bernard Barry , Paddy Tully and John McEvoy to name a few. The 1970s saw an unprecedented run of success for the Club and our teams performed with distinction and developed a deserved reputation as a top-class footballing side. Several picthes were used around this time including behind the Boyne School, on the Athboy Road where the Eamonn Duggan Industrial site stands and also on the Kildalkey Road where Avondale estate was built. The most significant move by the present Club was the purchase of the grounds at Knightsbrook on the Summerhill Road in 1976. The grounds were named in honour of founding Chairman Paddy Tully on the 25th Anniversary of the Club in 1992.