2024 SuperCupNI: Bushmills hosts first game

Mervyn Greer speaks to the News Letter after Bushmills hosts SuperCupNI games for the very first time.

Transcript

00:00Well, Mervyn, many thanks for joining us. The Super Cup obviously started here today

00:04in Bushmillas. Did you ever see the day that it happened?

00:08Something we only could dream of. Since I was a cub playing here, you only thought Super

00:13Cup was such a large international tournament. We never in our wildest dreams thought we

00:17could get it here. But a lot of hard work. We're finally here and let's hope for a very

00:22good week.

00:23You mentioned hard work. How much plans and preparations went into this one, I guess?

00:26And you've probably a good group of volunteers as well?

00:28This has been an ongoing thing from Bushmillas United Youth Set-up. We always had the goal

00:32to push and be bigger and see how far we could get. And it was a couple of years ago when

00:36we realised how great a facility we had and how well we could get the pitch looked. And

00:40we thought, well, why not try our hand? We heard about the Super Cup about six months

00:45ago. It's been non-stop. We've stayed off the pitch. We've got all the work that needs

00:50done. Very little help from outside influence. We've done it all ourselves and the week's

00:55here.

00:56So you've got the Korean Crusaders up first and there's some other big, big games throughout

00:59the week?

01:00A couple of local teams to get us started. Then we have a certain set of Scottish Giants

01:05in the afternoon. With another local county team. We have a mix of county teams, large

01:10academies in the Premier League, Bursa Academy. A mix of all around the world. Plus our local

01:16teams, which we're really glad to see. We have a couple of young players who played

01:19for our UF team in the first game, played for Korean. So it's very, very good to see.

01:23And how good is it for Bushmills as a whole, obviously, with the tourism and people coming

01:27here?

01:28Well, we're expecting, especially with the local games and then with Rangers today, that

01:32the town's going to be thriving. We're not expecting any empty seats, well, any empty

01:37spaces to stand. Tourism, a lot of local businesses putting on deals for anybody that comes to

01:43the Super Cup, selling programmes. The town's buzzing for it and it's just such a pleasure

01:48to have it here.

01:49Many thanks for your time.