Feeney selected for Irish U16s
By Chris on March 28, 2012
All involved with Athlone Town FC would like to congratulate Val Feeney on his selection for the Irish under 16 squad who travel to Belgium to play the hosts in a double header in April. Val started out his career with Birr Town at underage level and whilst with Birr he was capped three times for the Republic at under 15 level. Val scored on his debut in Qatar in December 2010 and again he added to his goalscoring tally in the game against Belgium in March 2011. His third cap was in October last when the Republic travelled to Estonia.
Val has also had a number of trials with teams in England with the highlight of that when Manchester City invited him to play in a tournament in the Ukraine in August of 2011 where he played against the mighty footballing powers of Ajax, Barcelona and Spartak Moscow.
Val signed for our under 18 team in January who play in the DDSL and has quickly progressed to become part of Mike Kerley’s plans for the first team squad. When Val came on as a subsitute last Friday away to Mervue he became the youngest ever player 16years and 2 months to play for Athlone Town senior team. A very bright future awaits Val within the game and all involved wish him well.
Youth team manager Mickey Collins on hearing the news of Val’s call up said “Both myself and Alan McCaul (Asst Manager) are delighted with this news. I know Val was disappointed at missing out on the last international squad that was picked and this is a deserved reward for the hard work that Val has put in since he joined us in January. We were trying for a period of time to get him to come into Athlone Town and he has been an enormous addition to our squad at such as young age so much so that Mike Kerley has taken him, along with a few others from our youth squad, into the first team which is a huge boost to the whole underage structure within the club “