A new Dublin basketball club has been launched called the North East Inner City Basketball Club, NEIC Trojans.
The club was established by Dublin City Council, with a team led by former Dublin All Ireland winner, Michael Darragh Macauley, who himself remembers the joy of having a basketball placed in his hands as a child.
AIG, who have been involved in a number of NEIC projects over the last number of years, are proud to help support the club with some practical playing and logistical support for the 2023 season.
The cash support which they are providing will enable the hire of buses to bring players to venues around the city, something which is not an issue in the suburbs where parental assistance and access to transport is not even thought of as a barrier.
“We want to make sport a part of these kids lives and we want to make the club sustainable in the long ter,” MacAuley told us this morning.
We have been running nurseries but handing the boys and girls onto other clubs is easier said than done so we have taken the plunge to create our own club, initially fielding at U14 for boys and girls but with the long term ambition to go all the way to senior level.”
The club is based in Larkin College off Gardiner Street and is also linked in with Trinity College Dublin who support the club in a variety of ways including providing table officials for home games, visits from Scholarship athletes, free access to Trinity Meteors Super League games and 50 free hours of court time for local schools and community initiatives.
“AIG has been working with our close neighbours in the North East Inner City (NEIC) project for several years and are delighted to help support this excellent project where children from so many diverse backgrounds have been brought together to form a new basketball club in the heart of Dublin,” said Aidan Connaughton, General Manager of AIG Ireland.
“We wish all the teams success into the future and we would like to say a special thanks to Michael Darragh McAuley who has given so much of his time and passion to make this a reality along with the support of the NEIC task force, Trinity College, Larkin College and Dublin City Council.”
“The NEIC Trojans is a project that was started in 2018 through running basketball academies in the local area,” continued MacAuley.
“Basketball is thriving in the area now and it is long overdue that the North Inner City finally has its own club. The North East Inner City is a melting pot of new communities from all over the world, and basketball is a game which has no boundaries in bringing these communities together.”
“Basketball has been a big grá of mine personally since I was a kid and has been so positively influential in my life, and I hope that some locals kids can have a similar experience to what I had.”
“We have around ten parents and volunteers helping in all sorts of areas from coaching to setting up, and social media to getting kids down to the College.”
“There is so much that goes into setting up a club and we are building this to be around for today’s kids but also long into the future.”
“Working with Sport Against Racism ireland, we have seen the value of football initiatives and we want to recreate that on the court.”
