LAUNCHING NEW DEVELOPMENT
The John Lockes GAA club and its members have always been ambitious and forward thinking when providing facilities for the young people of our parish, that ambition really came to the fore in the mid 1970's when an idea by a little Catholic Curate from County Wicklow called Father Liam Dunne planted an idea at a club dinner dance about developing our own grounds and in turn ignited a spark amongst club officials and members alike. The idea set the wheels in motion. The eleven acre field known as Fennelly's was bought for the princely sum of £44,000 old Punts. It may not sound like a lot today but 35 years ago that was a serious amount of money to a struggling junior club with little money. The parish priest at the time was Canon John Kennedy who was a wonderful man for raising money and had more or less single handidly renovated the three churches in the parish through running dances and marquee festivals. As well as been a wonderful Parish Priest he was also a great Gael and he was very much behind the project the John Lockes were undertaking. Many meetings and discussions took place before final agreement was reached on what was to be developed at what was to be called John Locke Park. A high quality playing pitch and at the time state of the art dressing rooms were put to plans and so began the fundraising and building of John Locke Park until it was officially opened on the 5th June 1983 by Con Murphy former president of the GAA. At that time the club produced a commemorative book covering from the formation of the club up to 1983. John Locke Park was nominated shortly after as the second county grounds and went on to host inter county league games as well as the Oireachtais Hurling final in 1984 between Kilkenny and Cork. Probably one of the John Lockes greatest days was winning the County Minor 'A ‘final at John Locke Park. That year Nowlan Park was out of commission so this final was played at Callan. The same team which consisted of County Minors that year John Power, Bosco Bryan and Liam Egan went on to also win the County league title, on both occasions defeating Erins Owen Castlecomer.
But like all things and places time moves on and John Locke Park and its facilities are showing its age, so for the past number of years the club has been plotting and planning a new development at the Park. The plans include the building of a state of the art club rooms as well as a hurling alley with Astra turf surface. Building this also includes the moving of the pitch, installing new car park facilities as well as building a club shop and providing proper facilities for the public. All ready there is a lot of progress at the grounds and hopefully when completed John Locke Park will be in full use again towards the autumn of 2013. On Friday night 28th September the club will officially launch the new development at the Parish Hall Callan beginning at 8pm. The club have invited key note speakers to the event including former GAA president Nicky Brennan. The John Lockes have produced a wonderful commemorative booklet of the history of the club from 1983 to the present day. This will be on sale for a cost of €3.00 and has loads of terrific photographs of teams during that period as well as celebrating the clubs most historic year when they played in the All-Ireland club final in February 2011. This new development will help to serve the community of Callan for the next 50 years and as always, the emphasises is on the youngsters in our community. The facilities been created will hopefully bring much success to the club and in time to come will consolidate the club as a senior club in the County matching the facilities they are creating. The club send an open invitation all parishioners to come to the Parish Hall on Friday 28th September for what will be a very historic occasion.