November 11th in Old Wesley Clubhouse – we were blessed to have over 30 players, friends and partners along to the 1981 & 1982 McCorry cup reunion for a buffet meal and drinks.
It was a fantastic evening to have so many available to come – many had not seen each other for the majority of those 40 years. Luckily, considering the era we came out of school in the 1980s, most of the group currently live on the island of Ireland. We had Andy Dixon travel from Munich, Germany and the highlight of the night was a one hour Zoom call with three characters living abroad – AJ- Tony Johnson (New Orleans, USA), Glenn Jones (Perth, Australia) and Haruki Kizawa (Tokyo, Japan). Thanks goes to Johnny Gillis for setting that up. Alan Lewis gave us a few words in memory of three team members that have since passed away sadly – Stephen Mooney, Richard (Turbo) Murray, and more recently Bill Cooper. We even had the three coaches involved Alan Doherty (Doc), Des Johnson, and Mel Smyth (Mel attended in spirit as he had a bad flu). Many had lost some or most of their hair; where they had kept it, it most certainly had gone a more distinguishing grey, and some of those flighty backs of old are now looking more like … well, forwards, let’s say. One more noticeably than others had done the reverse. Mark Stephens a front 5 player in his day was now looking like an agile three quarters player!
I think everyone thoroughly enjoyed reacquainting themselves with their fellow McCorry cup team members again. No doubt we will aim to revisit with another get together in a number of years’ time again. I would like to thank Michael Weafer and his team and the caterers that looked after us so well on the night for playing their part in making it such a memorable evening.
Roger Laird