Sport and leisure in Monaghan
Monaghan is a football county first and everything else second. Gaelic football here is not a pastime, it is the thing the county is known for, and the atmosphere in the town on a championship Sunday tells you that quickly enough.
Gaelic games
Monaghan Harps is the town club, founded in 1905, playing at Gavan Duffy Park. It fields men’s and ladies’ football, hurling and handball, which makes it one of the broader clubs in the county.
St Tiernach’s Park in Clones, half an hour west, is the county ground and the traditional home of the Ulster championship. If you are here in summer and there is a game on, that is where the county goes.
Club details across the county are on monaghangaa.ie.
Soccer, rugby and athletics
Monaghan has junior and schoolboy soccer clubs playing in the North East Football League and the local underage leagues, with pitches around the edge of the town.
Monaghan Rugby Club plays in the Ulster junior leagues and runs mini and youth rugby through the winter.
There is an active athletics club in the town, and a parkrun locally, which is the easiest possible way to find other runners without committing to anything.
Swimming and gyms
Monaghan Leisure Complex at Mullaghcroghery on the Clones road is the main public facility. It has a six lane twenty five metre pool, a separate children’s pool with water features, a flume, sauna, steam room and a full gym. It is the largest health and fitness centre in the area and it takes public membership as well as casual admission.
Both the Hillgrove and the Four Seasons run leisure clubs attached to the hotels, with pools and gyms, and both sell memberships to people who are not staying. There are also several independent gyms and studios in the town.
Golf
Rossmore Golf Club is on the Cootehill road beside the forest park, an eighteen hole parkland course laid out through the drumlins, which means very few flat lies. There is a second eighteen hole course at Coolshannagh beside the Four Seasons, on the Armagh side of the town.
Walking and cycling
Rossmore Forest Park is the obvious one, with marked trails from about a kilometre up to eight, and it is close enough to walk to from the south side of the town. Fuller detail is on the things to do page.
Sliabh Beagh, twenty minutes west on the Tyrone border, has longer waymarked walking and cycling routes through bog and forestry, and is where you go when Rossmore feels too tame.
For road cycling, the townland roads around Monaghan are quiet, but they are also drumlin roads, so there is no such thing as a flat spin here. Everything is short climbs and short descents.
Lough Muckno at Castleblayney, twenty minutes south, has watersports, forest walks and the largest lake in the county.
Facilities and pitches
Monaghan County Council maintains public playing pitches, playgrounds and the astroturf facilities around the town, and takes bookings for several of them. Club grounds are generally booked through the clubs themselves.
If you have just moved to the town and want to get a child into a sport, the schools are the quickest route in. Nearly every club in Monaghan recruits through the primary schools, and the coaches will be known to the school office.
Details on this page last checked . If something here is out of date, it probably is our fault rather than yours.