Saturday morning saw over 270 children from Tipperary, Offaly, Cork, Clare and our own club Mungret descend onto Mungret GAA Club for the inaugural Pa O’Brien U10 Hurling tournament, sponsored by SUPERMACS. This tournament came about as the U10 hurling team had played many of these teams during challenge games or tournaments and some of the clubs have long standing relationships with our club. The purpose was to foster new and existing relationships with these stalwarts of hurling that we as a club could benchmark ourselves over the coming years. The tournament is named after our own club stalwart Pa O’Brien, whose son Kieran is a key member of our coaching team and organised this tournament for the kids. Pa has provided mentoring and coaching to many of the players gone by, that are now coaches themselves and to existing members from our underage to senior level. This tournament was enabled by the great sponsorship of John and Mary Lyons of SUPERMAS, Dooradoyle who have been great in supporting the club for years.

Group A had Mungret St Pauls Red, St Rynagh’s (Offaly), Scariff/Ogonnelloe (Clare) and Ballinhassig (Cork). Group B had Silvermines (Tipperary), Newtown Shandrum (Cork), Holycross-Ballycahill (Tipperary) and St Joseph’s Doora Barefield (Clare). The standard of hurling across all games was of the highest class. The top team in each group went onto fight for the right to take home this new Pa O’Brien cup. Newtown Shandrum won an exciting final against St Rynagh’s. Mungret Reds who played fantastic flowing and team hurling in their first two group matches but came up short against St Rynagh’s, won the B final against St Joseph’s Doora Barefield in an exciting final. Holycross-Ballycahill beat Scariff/Ogonnelloe in the C final with Ballinhassig overcoming Silvermines in the D final.

In parallel to the A tournament we ran a B tournament which was mainly made up of the U9 players in the squads. There were four teams playing here with Mungret White losing out to St Josephs in this final after overcoming Scariff in the semi-final. Holycross beat Scariff in the 3^rd/4^th place play off. All players on the day received medals and the winning captains of all the finals were presented their trophy by Pa O’Brien.

I would like to thanks all the Mungret players who played in this great tournament: Marcus Lyons (Captain of Red team), Diarmaid Hynes, Brian Hassett, Conor Morgan, Tom Lloyd, Darragh Johnston, Cian Moloney, Fintan Fitzgerald, John Wright, Mark O’Brien, Luke Walsh, Cian Baggott, Jack Hannon, Conor Collins, Muiris Ahern, Jake Stack, Adam Dore, Conor Galligan (Captain of White team), Conor Johnston, Evan McInerney, Sean Morrissey, Christopher McSweeney, Amy O’Halloran, Luke Reidy, Sean Duff, Mark Galvin, Darragh Hogan, Adam Flavin, Jake Foley, Amir Almukhtar, Jake O’Sullivan, Sean Condon, Denis O’Dwyer, Eoin Ward, Robert Farrell, Liam Ahern and Conor Smith. I would like to thank all the coaches for the support throughout the year: Mike Galligan, Denis Moloney, Paul Walsh, Cian O’Brien, Kieran O’Brien, Dermot Morrissey, Kevin Baggott.

This Pa O’Brien tournament would not have been a success without the parents and family members who supported the players throughout the year and for providing food and drinks for all who attended the event. We would like to thank Helen McKeogh and rest of the parents and club members who looked after feeding the people. John and Ger who helped getting the goals ready as all available goals were required for the four pitches. Like to thanks Sinead and Theresa for taking the photos on the day. These will be available to see on the website shortly. Attached are some photos taken on the day.

A final thanks goes to Kieran O’Brien for organising a fantastic event.

U10 hurling training is now reduced to Thursday evenings only for the next couple of weeks.