Coachford Festival donates €7000 to charities

Broomhill Vintage Club presented the proceeds of their Coachford Autumn Festival to five charities last weekend.  Due to the huge support of the festival’s sponsors, participants, supporters, visitors and stewards the club found themselves to be in the wonderful position of being able to donate €7,000 to charity. Suicide Aware were the main benefactors receiving €2,500. Coachford Tidy Towns were given €1,500 and the local Care of the Aged, St. Olan’s Conference of St. Vincent De Paul and Macroom Community Hospital received €1,000 each. Festival secretary, Peter Dineen said that “We are hugely indebted to our sponsors and to all those who supported the festival. Without your help we could not run the event and be in this position to donate €7,000 to all these very worthwhile causes. “   In accepting the donation, Dhaiti O’Donobhain from Suicide Aware thanked Broomhill Vintage club and said “this very generous donation will be put to good use in promoting positive mental health and helping those who may be going through times in dealing with issues in their lives.”   

Explore Coachford College

Coachford College Open day for 1st year students starting September 2014 will be held on Saturday 5th October from 9am to 12 noon where 6th class students will be taken on a programme of events around the school. Parents are welcome to join a 40 minute tour at 10amor 11am and refreshments are available. Primary schools in the catchment boundary area are being visited in the next two weeks with brochures and enrolment forms. Parents of children in a primary school outside of Coachford College catchment area and who wish to visit the school or enrol their child for 1^st year in 2014 should contact the school office for the necessary material and forms. Coachford College can be contacted by ringing 021 7334113.

Top Class

The College’s leaving Certificate class of 2013 achieved far above the national average in their CAO points. Approx 50% of the students achieved over 400 points compared to only 33.7% nationally while approx 20% of Coachford College students scored over 500 points compared with 9.7% nationally. This was a great success for the school and students and further shows the high quality of this facility.

Coachford gets tidier

The 2013 results for the National Tidy Towns competition saw Coachford gain eight points on the previous year’s results. The Village was praised for the Litter control, Landscaping and general tidiness and for the appearance of many of the business premises. Chairman of the committee, John McCaffery said “while there is no doubt that we are moving in the right direction there is a huge body of work still to be done. We jumped 8 points this year which is great but we are still coming from a very low base and are operating with a tiny number of people for such a large village. Our goal for the next two years is to get over 200 marks, we are currently on 192. The projects that we undertook this year were recognised by the judges and that was encouraging and we have a lot more ideas and plans that we want to implement over the coming years. Onwards and upwards.”

Under 16 footballers reach final

Aghabullogue Under 16 footballers have reached the East Region B football Final having beaten Ballinhassig in the Semi Final last week. The boys will, however face strong opposition from tournament favourites, Cill na Martra in the final. The Gaeltacht side were last years county Under 15 champions and have been scoring goals at will in this year’s championship. Trainer of the Aghabullogue team, John Hogan said  “We are all looking forward to the final, the lads have trained well since the semi final. It isn’t that often you get to play finals and we will give it our best shot to come home with the trophy. There is no arguing that we are the underdogs but a final is a final and you’d never know what could happen”. The final is fixed for Monday September 16^th at 6.15pm in Kilmurry. On this Saturday evening in Mourneabbey Aghabulllogue’s Intermediate hurlers take on Dromina in a must win Intermediate hurling relegation final.

Schoolboys Soccer

The Schoolboys league starts in earnest this week. First up is the under 13s who travel toBlarney on Saturday morning with a kick off time of 11.45am. This is the boys second game of the season. They already accounted for Corinthian Boys last weekend on a score line of 5 – 2 with goals from Luke Casey, Jack Oldham, Mark Murphy and Josh Martin. On Sunday the Under 14s play Fermoy in Carrigadrohid at 12.45pm  and the under 16s travel to Kilboy where they play Churchvilla at 10.30am.

Pedal Power

The very best of luck to Coachford girl Nicola Doherty who is one of the riders in this years Ras na mBan. A total of 105 riders from ten nations have entered this year’s edition of An Post Rás na mBan, Ireland’s top international stage race for women. It’s the biggest ever entry for the event and is matched by for quantity by the quality of the riders set to take the start of this year’s five-day, six stage event in Ennis, Co Clare. Nicola is no stranger to the saddle having cycled  300km across Munster in one day in May 2012 for charity. In this race Nicola is part of the Munster team and has been training hard for the event over the last number of months. The race started on Wednesday, 11th September in Ennis and runs until next Sunday15th.Highlights of the race will be broadcast in a half-hour programme due to be aired for the first time on British Eurosport on October 8th .