College Futsal and grass roots Futsal growing in Northern Ireland

A team from Belfast Metropolitan College were victorious in the Irish Football Association’s inaugural Colleges Futsal Tournament. They secured the trophy with a narrow 2-1 victory in the final over a South Eastern Regional College team.

Lisburn Leisureplex was the venue for the event, which featured six teams – two from Belfast Met, two from SERC’s Lisburn campus and two from Northern Regional College (Magherafelt and Coleraine campuses). The teams took part in round-robin matches before Belfast Met 1 and SERC 2 eventually met in the decider. In the final Jake McLarnon scored both goals for Belfast Met, while Andy Mooney replied for SERC.

Jonathan Michael, the senior Northern Ireland futsal team manager, said he was extremely impressed with the quality of the players on display.As part of the Irish FA’s Let Them Play youth football strategy and the Game Changer futsal strategy, the sport of futsal is being delivered throughout Northern Ireland in schools, colleges, universities and clubs. In Cookstown today children were taking part in a Futsal tournament:

The growth of the sport has been massive in the past 12 months and the Irish FA has set a target of having 7,000 participants involved in futsal programmes by the end of 2017. The Irish FA included Futsal in their Let Them Play Conference which takes place tomorrow, the Football Associations support for the sports development in incredible and a great example to many associations, you can see their development strategy in the research section of the Futsal Focus official website: http://bit.ly/29697Yq

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