Over the past three days Monaghan Coaching & Games ran their annual Farney Academy Easter Camps. This is a 3-day camp which catered for boys and girls from 5 – 12 years of age.

Four camps took place this year in Ballybay, Clones, Magheracloone and Scotstown. To highlight the success of the camps, in 2015 five camps took place with a total of 450 children taking part, but this year with only four camps, the numbers increased to 515, which is great to see.

Monaghan Coaching & Games would just like to thank each of the host clubs in helping us promote the camps and help with the organisation and clean-up at each camp. It was evident a lot of work was put in by each and every host club in promoting the camps in their locality. We would just like to pay particular thanks to all the host club Coaching Officers who distributed application forms, put up posters and signs and attending meeting in relation to the Easter Camps. All your hard work doesn’t go unnoticed and we thank you for the excellent promotion of our games to the younger members of our community.

We were lucky enough to have a number of our county players namely Rory Beggan and Ryan McAnespie working at the Easter Camps this year. Before the camps even began, Rory was busy out promoting the camps in our local primary schools. We have no doubt this had a great impact in the massive numbers attending the camps and it was great opportunity for the children to get a meet their heroes. During the camps, Rory attended the Scotstown, Ballybay and Magheracloone camps where he either spent the day coaching the different groups, undertaking different challenges against the children, answering their questions and most importantly of all signing autographs and taking pictures! We would also like to thank Fintan Kelly and Darren Hughes who attended the Awards Ceremony at the Clones and Scotstown camps.  This is an element of the camp which all the children love and we would just like to thank Rory, Ryan, Fintan and Darren an for coming along and working or attending the camps this year.

We would just like to thank all our coaches and assistant coaches. It was evident that they all brought something new and different to the camps which the children really like. The coaches play the most important role in ensuring all the children enjoy the camps and come away each day with a smile on their face. We would just like to thank the ladies which helped out on Tuesday morning at the registration on the camps namely Anita, Marion and Eileen. Our camp coodinators Colin Malone, Ann McKenna, Paul O’Connor and Adrian Alford who put in  tireless work all week.

Finally last but my no means least I would just like to thank all the host clubs for providing the facilities for all our camps. We would also like to thank them for providing a facility to store all the gear. This saves our coordinators a lot of time each and every day loading and unloading the gear.

Over the coming weeks, Monaghan Coaching & Games will begin the promotion of the Kellogg’s Cul Camps so keep an eye out for the application forms. You can already register online for the camps by logging into kelloggsculcamps.gaa.ie

Please see below for a selection of photos from the camps.