Munster Senior League soccer: Park United celebrate 50 years in football

The 2025/26 Munster Senior League season will get under way next week with games in the Keane Cup for senior teams and the League Cup for junior sides.

By now all teams have some pre-season training and games under their belts, and for Park United it was an extra busy week last week when the club launched it’s 50th anniversary celebrations which continued throughout last week, concluding with a concert at the Mitchelstown Leisure Centre on Sunday evening.

Dave O’Connor has served in pretty much every role in the club and had been part of the Park senior management teams for several years, before stepping back for a spell.

For the new season O’Connor is back on board the club’s flagship management team which will be again headed by Keane Cahill.

O’Connor’s focus last week, though, was on the week long celebrations which, he says, went off brilliantly.

“We launched our book marking 50 years in football on the Friday and during the week, we had a tournament comprising players from our men’s senior team, ladies senior, team, junior team, youth teams, and our walking football side,” O’Connor explained.

“Those games took place during midweek and we had more than 90 players across the grades competing.

“On the Saturday we had a bumper family fun day, with bouncy castles, obstacle courses, foot darts, and a free barbecue, with more than 500 people attending.

“A great day was had by all and the weather played ball as well.

“We finished off the week’s events with a 1980s-90s-themed concert on the Sunday night and again there was a big attendance at the leisure centre.

“It was a fantastic week and we were delighted with the way the people in the town rode in behind us and showed us great support”.

While Park will celebrate 50 years in football this year, the club is still very much in its infancy with regard to the Munster Senior League.

A successful AUL side, the club decided to join the Munster Senior League in 2017 and in their first season they won the Beamish Stout Senior Second Division with a final day win over Casement Celtic.

The following year they consolidated their place in the first division with a fifth-place finish and they also beat North Cork rivals Fermoy in the final of the Pop Keller Cup.

With two trophies in as many seasons, they had announced themselves as a Munster Senior Club.

The following two seasons were covid-interrupted and when football fully returned for the 2021/22 season Park finished seventh in the table and the following season they were relegated back to the second division after finishing second from bottom.

The ambition would have been an immediate return, but the following season, when the division was split after one round of games, they were out of the promotion hunt after finishing in the bottom half of the table, while last season they finished seventh.

Park are a very different side now to the one that won trophies in their first two seasons in the MSL, with many of those players having retired or moved on, and O’Connor admits they are very much in a transition period.

“For us at the moment, it’s all about rebuilding the team. I think the second division is the right level for us at the moment, because we haven’t had the calibre of players that we had when we first came up to the MSL,” O’Connor said.

“We don’t have the conveyer belt that other clubs do; if fellas go off college after coming through youth we tend to lose them.

“But we have two U18 teams in the youth leagues this season and that is a huge bonus and they will be a boost for the adult sides.

“For the first time in a while we have youth players coming on to the senior and junior teams — I think it’s the highest number we’ve had for a while.

“We also managed to hold on to Tommy Dalton. He was our top scorer least year and other clubs had been interested in him.”

Dalton scored 33 goals last season, 31 of them in the league and will be an important player for Park next season.

“We have the nucleus of last year’s squad, with a few extra coming up from junior along and, as I said, it’s about rebuilding and having a team strong enough to compete in both senior and junior and our hope is that we will hold our own in the respective grades.”