placenamesThe Downs
Na Dúnta
A house raffle helped turn a football club dependent on borrowed fields into a community meeting place.
The name
A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.
Recorded forms
- Na Dúnta · Irish · main form · validated name
- The Downs · English · main form
Place & story
Buying the field
For many years The Downs footballers relied on farmers’ fields, sometimes putting up goalposts for a match and removing them afterwards. In the early 1980s, members organised a house raffle to finance a permanent ground. Garry Doyle’s later on-site reporting describes the field bought with the proceeds and the clubhouse’s wider use for drama, bingo, wheelchair groups and wedding celebrations. [2]
Recording a shared history
For the club’s 125th anniversary in 2018, Gerry Buckley and Aiden McGuire compiled a 112-page illustrated history. Buckley’s own account recalled changing behind a ditch and contrasted those conditions with the facilities developed by later volunteers. The book also documented the ladies’ section, formed in 2002, and the club’s involvement in Scór. [3]
Geographic information
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — The Downs. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- The community that wouldn’t die, 4 December 2022 · Garry Doyle, The42
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.