Our man Frank on an eventful trip to Galway; He calls for support for an ongoing fundraising golf event in Mountbellew; Rugby stars of the future and present… and remembering Paddy, who made his mark as an Olympian…
It’s six o’clock on Wednesday morning of last week, and as we have an appointment in University Hospital in Galway at 8 am, we are on the road already – mindful of the very heavy traffic that we will probably encounter as we get close to the western city.
It’s pitch dark at this early hour, but thankfully the extremely heavy rain we had through most of the night has stopped, and everything is going to plan as we start our journey.
We are confident that we have left ourselves loads of time, and so I go by Murray Timbers, onto the main Galway road just outside Ballygar (normally I would take the slightly shorter route that reaches the main road at Ballaghlea School). Anyway, as we left Ballygar we heard a sort of a clanking noise, and it didn’t take long to realise that at that unearthly hour (it was now 6.20 am), we had a puncture.
Now as someone who is too stiff to tie my shoelaces or even put on my shoes unaided, the task of taking off my blown-out tyre and replacing it with the spare wheel (which, by the way, was one of those thin ones that looks like a bicycle tyre and can’t be driven at more than 80kms an hour) was definitely out of the question. And so we had to come up with plan B.
Plan B involved ringing my brother-in-law Paul and my son Mark, and credit to each of them, they both arrived quickly and we were back on our journey before 6.45 am. I have always avoided the new motorway to Galway from outside Abbeyknockmoy, because I am not great at satnavs and that type of stuff, but I decided that in order to avoid the permanent traffic jams that seem to be in Claregalway, I simply had to opt for the motorway and take my chances.
Remarkably, I managed to get all the way without any other disaster, and we arrived at the hospital in plenty of time for our appointment. Everything went well and we were back home again in time to avoid watching Manchester United play Bayern Munich! As it happened, United put on a reasonable performance, and despite apparently being played off the park, they got away with a 4-3 defeat.
As for us, the puncture could have derailed us, but thanks to Mark and Paul we made it safely to Galway, and in good time.
Please support golf for Haiti (watch out for fearsome foursome)
I have often told you about the people of Haiti, where, in an area not much bigger than Munster, more than 10 million people live in poverty, and where sickness and death among adults means there is a huge number of orphaned children, many of whom end up in Our Little Brothers and Sisters Orphanage.
This orphanage relies almost exclusively on public donations, and Ballygar’s Michael Nolan does heroic work in raising funds for it. All this week he has a Golf AM-AM running in Mountbellew Golf Club, all proceeds of which will go to help the orphanage. Teams of four can play for only €80, businesses can sponsor a tee box for €50, and friends or individuals can sponsor one for €30.
In a week where the European Ladies team have just retained the Solheim Cup in a hugely exciting match against the US, and as we prepare for this week’s Ryder Cup, the biggest golf news is that a fearsome foursome are getting ready to burn it up in Mountbellew. My brother Duff, my son Paul, Richard Smyth of the big-hitting 3 iron (so he says) and yours truly (that’s me) are scheduled to hit off early Saturday morning, and it’s fairly certain that first prize is already spoken for… but we won’t have anything to do with it.
Anyway, if you can hit a ball at all (not that hitting it really matters), get yourself and three others up to Mountbellew some time during the week and support Michael in his effort to raise much-needed funds for Our Little Brothers and Sisters Orphanage over there in Haiti.
Looking forward to seeing you on Saturday, and if you are playing anywhere near us, maybe wear a hard hat!
Rugby fever
It’s Thursday morning of last week, and as a member of the Creggs Rugby Club pitch committee, I am on duty – that’s because we are playing host to 30 (yes, you read that right) local national schools, whose many children are taking part in a rugby blitz.
From about 10 o’clock the buses start to arrive, and presumably because the children have had time off from school, their enthusiasm is a joy to witness; their faces are lit up with excitement as they make their way into the club grounds.
My job is to get the buses to park across the road in Gannon’s car park, and to make sure that everyone gets safely to our grounds. Thankfully, I managed to get both jobs done without any incident.
All the schools had been aligned with different teams from the Rugby World Cup, and so they came with flags and banners representing the different countries. When they all marched around the pitches with their many colourful items, it was a sight to behold.
I have said it before, but sometimes you would have to pinch yourself to realise that our little village has become such a hub for all kinds of rugby activity. There were at least three to four hundred children, along with many teachers, and 20 or 30 bus drivers, in Creggs on Thursday, and from what I saw on Saturday, when the underage rugby returned for the season, there were as many more in the village that morning. Every parking spot was taken, and if you didn’t know where you were you would think you were in a big town!
I suppose with the week that is in it, it would be wrong to ignore the fantastic performance and victory of our Irish rugby team against South Africa on Saturday night. I have been watching rugby for nearly all my life, and I don’t think I ever saw as ferociously competitive a half as the first half of that game. If ever my pacemaker was tested, it certainly was for the entire duration of the game!
I won’t make any predictions about how far this Irish team will go, but no matter what happens from now, on Saturday night they earned the right to be regarded as one of the bravest, if not the bravest team that has ever represented Ireland.
Anyway, as we look forward to seeing more of Bundee and Johnny and the rest of our Irish team, it’s reassuring to think that the next generation of our rugby heroes are already learning their trade. Who knows, maybe one or two of the kids we saw in Creggs on Thursday or Saturday of last week will wear the jersey proudly in future World Cups! Stranger things have happened.
And finally…
In recent years the Paralympics have become one of the biggest sporting events on the world stage, and athletes like Jason Smyth and swimmer Ellen Keane are household names across this country.
Smyth has numerous Olympic and World gold medals, while Keane has won a couple of silvers at the World Games as well as a bronze and gold at the Olympics. In fact, her profile is such that she was a contestant in Dancing with the Stars, a competition she was second to Nina Carberry in.
The Special Olympics first took place in August 1968 in Chicago, as a result of the vision of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, a woman who believed in everybody’s abilities. They now take place every two years.
Back in 1985, Paddy Bradley (brother of Kevin here in Creggs) won a swimming silver medal in Paris, and followed that with a gold medal in Chicago in 1987. Living in Clane in Co. Kildare, Paddy recently passed away, and while he may not have had the profile of a Jason Smyth or an Ellen Keane, he too was a gold medallist, and every bit an Olympic Champion.
To Kevin, Mary, and the Bradley family, friends and relations, I extend my sincere sympathy on Paddy’s recent death. May he rest in peace.
