History

Passage AFC Club Logo

Passage AFC – Established 1972

Passage United was founded in 1972 by members of the local community, and has since upheld a proud community tradition from its beginning up to its 40thAnniversary in 2012.

The first playing field for the club, known as the “Back Field”, was partly land sought from the council by Jim Murphy and partly land donated by two local families the Mehigans and the Colemans, who generously gave up sections of their back gardens to make up the pitch.

In 1975 the club formed its first official Social Committee, Patrick Murphy (Chairman) Ann Forde (Hon. Sec.) Nora Lynch (Treas.) and members Mary Walsh, Phil O’Neill, Catherine Mehigan, Carmel Murphy, Dora Holloway, and Christine McNamara. realizing that as the club grew so did the cost and the great need for fund raising.

For the next few years, the club played its matches in various locations around the community, until it found its current home, Rockenham Park.

In 1982, the club purchased a local authority dump and swampland in Rockenham from the council, again with the help of the community with some local families putting up their houses to help secure the loan. The bog land was developed by the club and the community, and in 1985, the club opened a new top class playing pitch and clubhouse with a bar premises in Rockenham Park, having the proud honour of becoming the first junior club in Munster to have its own clubhouse & bar, and the first Community Hall in Passage West.

The club continued to fundraise around the community and by 1992 had serviced all the debts associated with the development of Rockenham Park.

A new changing room complex, complete with home & away changing rooms, shower, toilet facilities and a referees room on the ground floor, and an area to be utilized as a multi-functional room on the first floor, was added in 2006.

In 2011, state of the art floodlights were installed around the pitch in Rockenham Park with the aid of an Affiliation scheme of the FAI and Shared Access.

The club also has a lease from the Cork County Council on a site in Maulbaun, which originally consisted of 2 playing pitches and a small training area, and changing rooms. In 2000, although well into the stages of a development plan for the site, the Soccer Club took a decision to forego its lease on a portion of the land in order to provide a site for the New Primary School, as neither the Board of Management nor the Cork County Council could find a suitable site for the school.