Giving back at the heart of St Loman’s GAA Film Awards night

Giving back to the community is important to David Smyth Catering, said Amy Duignan, a member of the Smyth family who works in the business, when she dropped in to St Loman’s GAA to help launch their Film Awards fundraiser.

David Smyth Catering is the main sponsor of the event, and though Amy isn’t a member of the club, she says she and the family believe in supporting local events, “especially in the GAA, because it’s such a huge pillar of every community and it really brings people together”.

“The kids, and everyone in the club, learn skills they use for their entire lives, so it’s really important to us to sponsor events like this,” Amy added.

Pointing out that the family have their catering company, their hospitality venue (The Barn) and a hardware company in Tyrrellspass, she said “we know the support we get from the clubs and from so many people around, so it’s important for us to be able to give back”.

David Smyth Catering are well known in the area for their generous sponsorship of events and teams, and this year they are also supporting Westmeath LGFA and camogie, and also backed All-Ireland winning Coláiste Mhuire team.

Asked if she had been roped in to the St Loman’s Film Awards, Amy laughed and said not: “We’ve no real input in it at all, so we can’t rig it or anything! It’ll be completely by the book, but we’re looking forward to it, it’ll be a great event. Events like this bring everyone together, it’s not just one age group who’s putting work in, it’s everyone and it’s getting the wider community involved as well, which is great to see.”

Amy was joined by Paul Devine, secretary, and Aoife Davitt, chairperson, for the launch photo, and Paul explained some of the details for the Film Awards.

Work on the seven different movies is under way and the various teams are doing their own fundraising (see below). The big night is Friday May the 22 at Bloomfield House Hotel, doors open at 6.30, show starts at 7.30pm.

“We have seven films, approximately 80 actors plus extras,” said Paul. “The films are Father Ted, Derry Girls, The Hangover, The Full Monty – that will be an interesting one! First Wives Club, Bridesmaids, and The Town. It’s a mixture of contestants, people involved with the club, people not involved with the club, which is brilliant, bringing a lot of people together. It’s a big social night for the club, because it’s not often we get everybody together, and hopefully we’ll have a great night.

“The purpose of it is there’s a lot of developments going on. The grass has been sowed on the new pitch, we’ll need goal posts, dugouts, for when it’s ready, probably next year. We want to redevelop our clubhouse, it was built in the mid-1990s, so we want to upgrade that. A continuous upgrade of our facilities is the biggest thing, for the youth of the club – everything is geared towards the kids in the community and the more facilities we have, the better for them.”

St Loman’s GAA have more than 1000 members and, as Paul put said, “it’s a one-club model, boys, girls, men, women, all the one, we’re integrated, and have been for the last while”.

“That’s why the new pitch is important, because we have one full-size grass pitch, one astro pitch, and this will be a second full-size grass pitch, to cater for those numbers. We have a newly formed senior active group, too, so we want to have good facilities here for the them, and we have associations with a number of charities – our main sponsor, Dovida, are connected to Parkinson’s Ireland, and we hosted that walk here recently. It’s great to be able to have the facility here to cater for them.”

Aoife Davitt added: “It’s putting yourself out of your comfort zone – we’re asking people to commit a lot of time and to volunteer, but also to have lots of fun and to get to know new people, and that is evident from all the practising and from what we’ll see on the night.

“The main thing I would like to do is thank those people who are taking part. They have taken lots of time out of their busy lives and schedules to commit to the event, and also, we asked them to look for some sponsorship in order to make this a success. So we thank those sponsors in our community and maybe a little bit wider outside of the community that are investing and putting some funds towards the development of our club.

“We really want to push forward and make it (St Loman’s GAA) the best place it possibly can for people in the area.”