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Well done to James Sage (St.Joseph's Borrisoleigh), Tom McCutcheon (St.Joseph's Borrisoleigh), Grace Brennan (St Marys, Nenagh), Mark Carroll (CBS, Nenagh) & Ellen O'Dwyer (St Mary's Nenagh) competing in today's Munster Schools Combined Events Championships in Nenagh. The Munster Combined Events competition is made up of 60m Hurdles, Long Jump, 200m track, Shot Putt & 800m Track and is scored by points awarded for finishing position in each discipline. A lot to do in one day! Great results from our club's athletes with James finishing in 3rd with 2648 points (Intermediate Boys), Tom in 2nd with 2497 points (Junior Boys), Grace in 6th with 2139 points (Intermediate Girls), Mark in 5th with 2257 point (Intermediate Boys) & Ellen, with the clubs performance of the day, winning the Girls Junior competition with 2397 points. Well done all! Results can be found here: http://munsterschoolsathletics.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Schools-CE-2019-Results.pdf   
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 The coach never learns. He spends his life wishing for an old fashioned cross country course as were once fashioned by teak tough men and women of West Clare or South Kerry. Of course when one does arise as it did today in Limerick Racecourse the one person struggling to get around is of course the afore mentioned coach. The legendary Thurles runner, hurler and coach Patsy Dorney was grinning from ear to ear as we entered the course today so I should have known it was going to be tough. Patsy likes his cross country runners to be able to run straight through a thorny ditch with nothing for protection only an inate can do attitude. Being big, tall or small does not enter the equation just the fight and hearth of the athlete.
With this in mind it was always going to be a good day for our endurance squad. The U16 boys squad go from strength to strength. Led today by schools international Tom Walshe and his U15 teammate Cian Hodgins in 2nd and 3rd positions despite both being a year out of age. They were ably supported by Luke Purcell having his best race ever in 9th and track star Sean Hayes in 23rd position. Age is no barrier to bravery and right from the off today our youngest competitors Donnacha Browne U10 finishing 19th in his first Munster Cross country race and Lilly Duffy and Anna Paxman in the U12 girls showed huge resilience with fine battling performances. Kevin Finn was another stand out today with a 2nd place finish in only his 2nd race for the club. In fact Kevin led the race out from the start and will surely be an endurance star of the future as the longer the distance the better. His U12 teammates Ruairí Walshe, Charlie Cairns and Dillon Bergin also ran well and were unlucky to finish just outside the team medals. Our U14 boys were in good form also and Diarmuid Moloney was our first man home in 11th coming through very strongly late in the race. Ben Walshe was 13th in his first cross country race of the year after a short period out with injury. Both of those boys were on the Tipperary team that won the county title and will look forward to trying to do the same in the nationals on the 24th of November in Abbots Town. Thomas Bergin who is new to the group is showing great promise with a top 40 finish and will be a man to watch in the future. We also had three U18 athletes running and firstly Ailbhe O'Neill who hasn't always enjoyed tough cross country courses but this international track star has added another string to her bow by showing great resilience to record a 7th place finish a year out of age. Her teammate Lucy Mulcahy also had a great race and both girls were on the Tipp team that finished 3rd in the county competition. Ted Collins too showed great determination to finish top thirty over a gruelling 6000m course a little outside his normal 800m track distance. Excellent performance from Aaron Quigley finishing 4th U23 in the Munster Xc and also helped the Tipp Senior men's novice team to the bronze medals. The next outing for most of these athletes is the uneven age group Munsters in Conna, North Cork on November 10th. The club in planning on hosting a primary schools indoor T&F competition in November. We'd appreciate your support in sharing this note with parents & teachers in the county. Thanks, NOAC  Sunday 20th October
Munster Juvenile Even Age, Novice & U/23 Cross Country Championships Venue: Limerick Racecourse Time: First race at 11:30 (Arrive in time to get numbers and warm-up) Arrive: 10:30 (allow time for traffic) Entries: (Complete) https://ireland.entry4sports.com/entry/v5/competition/showEntries.php?compid=67 Even age Munsters. U10 Donncha Browne U12 Ruairí Walsh, Mikey Ryan, Dillon Bergin, Kevin Finn. U14 Ben Walsh, Thomas Bergin, Diarmuid Moloney. U16 Cian Hodgins, Tom Walsh, Seán Hayes, Luke Purcell, Jamie Moloney. U18 Sarah Lane, Lucy Mulcahy, Ailbhe O'Neill U18 Ted Collins County Tipperary Juvenile Uneven Age, Junior & Intermediate Cross Country Championships
5 individual titles 3 individual 2nd place finishes 4 individual 3rd place finishes. 4 team titles for Nenagh. Good day out. Senior Men - Intermediate Cross Country Championships Our senior men also travelled to Moyglass for the men's Novice race. After a great outing last week in Newport in the county novice they had great hopes for a team title in this week's Intermediate race with the addition of Aaron Quigley. Aaron ran brilliantly for 5th but the day from a Nenagh perspective belonged to Eoin Buckley in 3rd spot. Eoin was up with the leaders from the start and should be delighted with his very strong showing. Just behind Aaron was David Sheahan who won last week's Novice race. Starting slowly after being a little poorly during the week David finished like a train to take sixth. With four to score it was down to where our fourth man came home and up stepped Keith Butler with a superb run in 17th. Keith had to finish strongly to secure the title and this he did when passing four athletes in the run to the line to enable Nenagh to win by 4 points, 31pts to 35 for runners up Dundrum. It's been a while since Nenagh won this title but well worth the wait. County Tipperary Juvenile Uneven Age, Junior Cross Country Championships Second day of the County cross country saw the cross country circus move lock, stock and two smoking down to Moyglass where we were greeted with another top class course, blue sky's although the MC on the day John Moore from Dundrum could do with updating his music list. Luckily the U9s were not too perturbed by Whitney Houston's "I want to dance with somebody" and Fionn Tucker was our first athlete out and a very brave run saw him eventually finish 7th after a great final surge. Our U11 girls were not so lucky as Midge Ure was making a comeback before their race with similar success to his rugby countrymen ( come on they didn't vote for us) but Emily O'Neill in 5th and Sarah Long in 15th were superb and we're very ably backed up by Hannah Larkin and Lilly Marchand. Jennifer O'Leary was outstanding in the U13 girls race. She danced her way to an emphatic first County title and this Irish Dancing queen has a bright future in the sport. Lilly Duffy running out of age was an excellent 16th. Also U13 Diarmuid Moloney also won a first County title when he also distanced himself from the rest of the field up the hill for a great win. Diarmuid had tremendous backup from his team with Kevin Finn 3rd in his first race for the club, Ruairí Walshe 4th after being a little unwell during the week and Dillon Bergin 11th to anchor the team to a County title. Our schools international Tom Walshe was the class act of a very classy U15 race. Sitting in behind the Irish Schools minor champ Shane Buckley for most of the race Tom used his superior track speed to finish strongly and take the title. Thomas Bergin running out of age had a great run also to finish 8th in a very talented field. Our other international Ailbhe O'Neill looked strong in her seasonal cross country debut with a second place finish behind her old nemesis and fellow international Aimee Hayde from Newport in the girls U17 race and received their medals to the aptly titled "Girls just want to have fun" by Cindy Lauper. I'm guessing that was just a coincidence as John wouldn't know the difference between Cindy Lauper and Angela Merkel. We had another first time winner in the U17 boys when Seán Hayes went clear on the last lap from teammates George O'Leary running his best race ever and Luke Purcell just back from a slight injury. They finished 1—2—3 and along with Shaun Himli they easily took the team title. Last juvenile race of the day and John's music list took another turn for the worst when Aha had a first outing since 1989 but undeterred Ted Collins had a welcome return to form winning the U19 title and along with our U17 squad of Sean, George and Luke also took the junior U20 team title. Next week we are in Limerick racecourse for the even age Munster championships. Hope they have a better music list. This day could not have come soon enough for our endurance squad. Cross country contrary to popular opinion is like your favourite onesey or favourite slippers. It just embraces the senses and all life's little niggles and problems just melt away for a couple of hours at least. Some of us live in that world permanently and cannot understand the non believers.
Today was day one of the county cross country championships in Newport and it was plain to see that the Newport committee had put in a lot of hours getting the course ready. They even organised a nice sunny day to top it off. It was a tough hilly course which suited us perfectly to show off our early season conditioning. We had three U10s two girls Emma Beresford-Miller and Jane Quigley both running very determinedly for top 20 finishes. Then the slightly more experienced Donncha Browne ran out of his skin for second in the boys race. The three U12 girls Anna Paxman 8th, Lilly Duffy 9th and Mairéad O'Brien 12th ran very well considering they are more track stars than Xc stars. Diarmuid Moloney came up a year to finish 3rd in the U14 race and is starting to be noticed as the races get longer as he is an endurance machine. Tom Bergin running his first race for the club finished 7th in this race also and will be a force to be reckoned with going forward. It's said a picture is worth a thousand words and it's true also in sport where having our more experienced athletes demonstrate how it should be done is worth any amount of coaching. So our newbies on the day u10s and U12s were able to experience the hearth warming sight of Ruairí Walshe winning his U12 race and in the process beating the hot favourite Charlie Tobin of Newport. Also U12 we had new to the club Dillon Bergin 6th and the returning Mikey Ryan 7th both running really well. We also had Cian Hodgins, Tom Walshe and Seán Hayes live up to their favourites billing with a 1-2-3 finish in the U16 race and in the process easily taking the team title. Cian and Tom were out of age and should be strong contenders in the nationals later in the year. Sarah Lane ran very strongly to finish 3rd U18 A race won by Newport's Aimee Hayde and Lucy Mulcahy was 5th in the same race. Then Ted Collins finished 2nd in his U18 race over 6k. Normally a track specialist over 800m it was good to see him run strongly over this distance. Lastly after the juvenile programme finished our three senior men David Sheahan 1st, Eoin Buckley 3rd and Alan Kelly 4th dominated the Novice mens race. David and Eoin broke away early with Paddy Cummins of Moycarkey and David pulled away at the 4k point of the 6k race to win comfortably. Visit our Facebook page or Niall Moran Photography Facebook page for photos of the races. Well done all! |
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August 2020
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