Gangland feud spills over at junior soccer match as gardai struggle to keep rivals apart

Spectators arriving at the Sunday morning game began trading insults and a man considered to be a senior figure in the Keane gang was among those facing off against a rival group.

His arrival sparked nasty scenes which threatened to boil over into physical violence.

A number of objects were thrown as gardai, including members of the Public Order Unit, kept the two sides apart at Jackman Park in Limerick city.

A garda spokesperson confirmed to the Sunday World that there were no injuries and no arrests were made at the venue last Sunday.

The game was a Division 3A cup final between Geraldine AFC and Moyross United FC, which ended up being decided by a penalty shoot-out.

A spokesperson for the Limerick and District League told the Limerick Leader after Sunday’s match it was a “great game of ball between two fully-committed teams.”

“It was the biggest attendance of the season at Jackman with 500/600 people there,” the spokesperson said.

“This is the third time they have played each other with some extraordinary football and lots of goals. Geraldines had won the league and Moyross won the Cup today.”

Video clips of the confrontation have circulated on social media since Sunday with goading insults and taunts added to the posts.

The incident shows that while the lethal feud violence between the gangs in the city has died down in recent years, the underlying tensions are still there.

In the past, rival factions have had to be kept separate when accessing social welfare offices in Limerick with relatives of the rival gangsters being allocated different times to attend.

The bitterness between the clans was made apparent last year when David ‘Frog Eyes’ Stanners died in prison while serving life for the murder of Kieran Keane in January 2003.

Friends of Keane celebrated with champagne at his grave in social media posts gloating over Stanners’ death last October.

He had served over 20 years of his life sentence before being found unresponsive when warders opened his cell door.

People linked to Keane reacted with glee to the news, saying they were “delighted” that Stanners had died and it was their “time to celebrate”.

They posted videos on social media popping champagne and spraying it over Keane’s grave as part of their celebrations.

Eddie Ryan’s 2000 killing was the first murder in the feud which claimed 19 lives and included another 15 attempted murders.

The last serious act of violence came when gang boss Christy Keane was lucky to survive an assassination attempt in 2016.

Rival gang boss ‘Red’ Larry McCarthy got a six-and-a-half-year sentence last March for his role in the attack in which he pleaded guilty to sourcing a car for the gunmen.