A group of young soccer players from the Carrick Rovers club spent the recent Bank Holiday week end in Carhaix as part of the ongoing Town Twinning project. The players were accompanied by their two coaches as well as a member of the Town Twinning committee.
The young people flew from Dublin to Nantes on Thursday afternoon and were met on arrival by members of the Carhaix Twinning Association. On arrival in Carhaix the players were assigned to their host families for the week end and spent the evening getting to know each other.
The group visited the state-of-the-art Centre of Excellence of F.C. Lorient on Friday and experienced at first hand the facilities that are available to the top players in the region. On Friday evening the group were officially welcomed to the town and enjoyed a traditional Pancake Evening.
On Saturday the players participated in a coaching session with the first team coach of D.C. Carhaix, Charles Edouard Coridon, followed by a visit to the Municipal Swimming pool. The game for the Coupe de Jumelage, or Twinning Cup, was played on Saturday evening as a curtain raiser to the senior league game between D.C. Carhaix and Pont l’Abbe.
In what proved to be a very close encounter the Carrick boys took an early lead through centre forward, Jack Gillick. The local regional team from the Carhaix area pressed forward in the second half and eventually scored an equaliser from a free kick. As the clock ticked towards extra time the Carhaix eleven struck again with a late winner to re-claim the trophy. Even though the Carrick Rovers boys were disappointed to lose in such circumstances they are already looking forward to the return clash in October 2016.
On Sunday morning, both teams got together for a five-a-side tournament and the Carrick team members spent the afternoon with their host families. An early start on Monday morning from Carhaix meant that the group were back in Carrickmacross by lunch-time with many happy memories and new friendships made.
The members of the Carrick Rovers team were Tommy Byrne, Sean Burns, Fionnan Cassidy, Jack Gillick, Aaron Kearney, Barry Kieran, Thomas Marron, Oran Martin, Cathal McEneaney, Lorcan Murnaghan, Liam Og Murray, Fionn O’Callaghan and Dylan Ward while the travelling coaches were Niall Busby and David McSharry. Sean Egan, from the Twinning Committee also travelled with the group.
