"WILL YOU TRAIN US?"

 

It began one Saturday morning in 1970 when a group of young boys from Granville Park in Blackrock asked Allen Hughes to train them as a team and arrange matches against other teams. The first game - which they lost - was against the boys across the road in Ardagh Park. A short time after this historic event, Allen managed to enter one under 12 and one under 14 team in the South County Dublin District League.

​

'Big-time' football stretched the player resources of Granville Boys so after negotiations with Ardagh Boys, Granada F.C. was born. That fortuitous initial encounter helped generate one of the more romantic names in Dublin schoolboy football. If only we had the weather to go with it!

 

The club still had no pitch and no kit. Surprisingly in those days green shirts were hard to get and had to be custom-made. A pitch took a bit longer and the first season all games had to be played 'away', but the following year a home was found after another amalgamation - this time with Sean Compton's Holly Park team. It was reasonably flat ground if you discounted the manhole in the middle - which was magically reduced in height overnight!

 

It took a few more years, including a sojourn in Cornelscourt, before the current Hollypark pitch came into existence. A lot of footballs have crossed the line in the intervening period: the most successful year for the club was probably the 1991-1992 season. In that year our Under 15s did the treble, the Under 10s the double, the Under 9Bs won their league and the Under 14s got the shield. In 1998-1999 the Under 11 Premier team brought home our first 'foreign' trophy by winning the Solar Travel World Cup in Liverpool.