Winning their first trophy ever in the founding year of 2000, a U14B East Cork Championship was garnered with a team coached by Sean McElhinney and Tom Kavanagh and managed by Linda McElhinney.
The Club has grown massively over the years and at present, we have in the region of 430 club members, with over 17 teams and over 60 coaches.
Our first success at A level came with an extraordinarily strong U12 team in 2011 when we were crowned Cork champions. This was followed by success at the All-Ireland Community games level and from that point, the club grew from strength to strength.
Great credit must be given to the coaches at the time that had the vision to look forward with a 10-year plan. People such as Tim Murphy, Dave Carey, John McAllen, John Cashman, Michael Hannon and many others came on board later on and added to the work already accomplished by previous Chairpersons Barbara Buckley, Angela Fitzgerald, Brian Lotty and Phillip Harrington. The results of these combined efforts were shown in the last number of years when we reached the All-Ireland Féile finals on 3 occasions winning the competition outright in 2017 in Cavan. We now regularly are winning at ‘A’ county level and supplying many players to various Cork teams including 2 captains in 2020, 2 captains in 2019 and another in 2018. In 2017 it was an extra special year annexing 17 trophies across all ages and levels.
However, the highlight so far for the Club has to be the success of 2018, which will forever be etched in our history book as our first adult team, (our junior team), with a great mix of players and a dedicated, experienced management team went all the way to winning the All-Ireland Junior Club Championship. The 2018 team, managed by Dave Carey, was coached by former Cork legend Geraldine O Flynn who brought her vast experience and football knowledge to bear and helped in no small way to win County, Munster and All-Ireland honours.
2019 again was a year with much success across all levels. Development of our players and has been a focus of 2019 with the reintroduction of our primary school coaching course. Over the years, many of the local school teams have enjoyed success at Sciath na Scol competitions helping Glanmire Ladies Football Club players to continue playing football in the off-season.
In 2020, we started a “Mother and Others” football group. This group was started in order to help mothers and others who would not previously have had the opportunity to play football experience and to gain the love of football that their children have, and row in behind the 20×20 initiative of “can’t see her can’t be her”. It also created an opportunity for past players to return to the club and play football at a social level. So far, we have over 45 “Mothers and Others” signed up to play football for 2021.
2021 is set to see us have the biggest number for the club yet; we will have 3 competitive adult teams, an intermediate team and 2 junior teams. The intermediate team is currently being managed by Philip Hogan and coached by Jamie Cronin along with a strong background team.
We are extremely proud of the club that we have created and of the achievement in providing teams and opportunities for all our players and, no matter their skill level, everyone gets to play football.
The club crest consist of the famous glanmire bridge thought to be one of the oldest structures in cork. Note on the crest there are 3 ball like circles, the 3 balls symbolize the 3 rivers that run trough Glanmire, one of which runs along side the pike field (many a football was lost in this river), recently the 3 “balls” have come to symbolise the 3 clubs mens, ladies and juvenile men’s.
