County Tipperary Juvenile Uneven Age, Junior & Intermediate Cross Country Championships

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.