Peak Season

Irish Winners at JK2008; Switzerland's Daniel Hubmann cleans up

Three first places and a winning Relay team were the highest placed Irish competitors at the Jan Kjellstrom O-Festival in England over Easter.

Amid snow, gales and mud, 3000 competitors from many countries took part in this four day festival which started with a sprint race at the University of Surrey at Guildford. The two day individual event followed at Leith Hill (scene of JK71, 77 and 99) and Ashdown Forest (of Winnie the Pooh fame), and a relay at Eridge Old Park.
These are some of the best areas in southeast England for such events: certainly Leith Hill is beautiful runnable forest with a variety of detail. Ashdown is more straightforward with tussock, marshy open areas and easier navigation but more physical, while Eridge Park was good for a relay but very muddy at this time of year.

The sprint race was on a sloping university campus with many buildings, courses of less than 3 km and winning times of 15 minutes or so with lots of controls: something we could easily emulate here. Best Irish performances were Laurence Quinn (GEN), 4th M14 and Maritta Kymalainen (SET) 4th W45. Daniel Hubmann won the Elite race by 11 seconds (2.7 km in 14.01) and Sarah Rollins won the W21 race by 6 seconds (2.4 km in 15.58).

The 2-day individual event started at Leith Hill, near Guildford. High winds and wintry showers meant a run on the gloves and hats at the orienteering shops, but once you were running the conditions were reasonable most of the time. The area had plenty of paths and plenty of runnable forest, with areas of pits and detailed contour features. The elite courses had a short race today, with the classic distance at Ashdown to follow on Sunday.

Ashdown Forest was close to the army camp where 600 competitors stayed, including many of the Irish. Again, conditions were tough, with wind and heavy showers. Several valleys cutting into the area made for more climb than on the first day but the navigation was easier.

Best Irish results in the individual (combined days 2 & 3) were Ivan Millar (LVO) 1st M35S, James Logue (NWOC) 1st M40L, Noel Bogle (NWOC) 1st M70S, Angus Fyffe (FERMO) 2nd M14b, Julie Cleary (3ROC) 2nd W40S, Jack Millar (LVO) 2nd M10A. There was hot competition in other classes too, with Colm Rothery (AJAX) 6th in M45L running against Colm O'Halloran and Aonghus O'Cléirigh, for example.

The Elite classes were won by Daniel Hubmann (Switzerland) and Elise Egseth (Norway).

The Relays (for the JK Trophy) at Eridge Park were in a deerpark: runnable open surrounded by mixed forests with a high fence to separate the two. The weather again played its part: heavy snow showers to numb the waiting runners and cover the tracks in the forest. Very muddy underfoot with marshes and streams, but detailed enough and with some route choice, not a bad area. One of the Irish Junior Squad teams (Alex Simonin, Alan Lane and Padraig Mulry) won the Open Ad Hoc class by almost 4 minutes, with other Irish teams mostly based on the Junior Squad in 4th, 5th and 6th position. some of the last leg runners couldn't start because of travel arrangements.

Kristiansand OK (Norway) - featuring Daniel Hubmann again - won the JK Trophy, with a second Kristiansand club team 2nd and Edinburgh University 3rd. The Women's race was won by Elite Norwegian club Wing OK (with Elise Egseth), South Yorkshire 2nd and SHUOC 3rd.

JK 2009 will be in Northumbria: a sprint race in the centre of Newcastle upon Tyne; individual events are Kyloe and Detchant (as in JK 85) and a relay at Dipton. At least Easter is later next year ... and maybe next year there will be less confusion about what the various days are called. The Sprint race was called "Day 1", the first individual "Day 2" and the second individual "Day 3".

See full JK results here. See JK maps and routes here.

An Irish Junior Squad tour led took in the JK before a party headed for a few days training in Sweden and the 3-day Spring Cup at Hillerod in Denmark: the first major competition in Scandinavia after the snow melts. See details of the Spring Cup here. The event consists of a night event, classic and relay.
Update: Two Irish teams got top-10 places in the Relay. Colm Hill, Aine McCann and Alan Lane finished 4th and Rúairí Short, Conor Short and Kevin O'Boyle 6th.
Read more about the Spring Cup on the Ultimate Orienteering web site here.

Peak Season at home
We're coming to the time of the Irish Championships: entry closes on March 31st so be sure you have entered. Before that we have the Leinster Championships at Fair Mountain in Wicklow. Setanta Orienteers are organising the competition and you can see details here.
Don't forget the Irish 3-Day on Inishbofin on the June Bank Holiday weekend.




Any Old Maps?
Trinity College Map Library is trying to build up an archive of orienteering maps, showing the development of the sport and the changes which have occurred in orienteering areas through the years. Did you know, for example, that the first Irish 2-colour map was of Ballynahinch, Co. Galway, in 1970?
Brian Hollinshead is coordinating the collection of maps. If you can even loan Brian a map he can scan it and give you back the original: better still if you can donate a clean copy to the library.
See what maps are still missing here.

New arrival
UK-based Irish international Toni O'Donovan (CorkO) had a baby daughter in March.

March O-Bits

Rothery takes win at Bull Island for Ajax, Quinns make it a double for GEN

Colm Rothery led in the field on the 9 km Brown course 37 seconds ahead of John Casey making it an Ajax double at last Sunday’s Leinster spring series event at Dublin's Bull Island.

Off the back of a hard cross country race the day before (in which he beat Setanta rival Gerry Brady), he was well pleased given that it was his first outing on the map. Reckoning the time could have been pushed into the low 50s, his approach of navigating off larger features and isolated vegetation lost him time when the intricate contour detail of Aonghus O'Cléirigh's map was the way to go.

A rise in form may see him mount a challenge at the upcoming Leinster Championships at Fair Mountain on April 6th (Details here) but he will face stiff competition from some of the younger contingent absent on Sunday.
The Quinns, Laurence (M14) and Jonathan (M12) made it a double for GEN (Great Eastern Navigators) with Laurence taking first place on Light Green, Jonathan first on Orange. Both won against large strong fields.

Una May (3ROC) showed her experience and put two minutes between herself and Maritta Kymalainen (Setanta) at the top of the Green course.

James Millar, M10, LVO (Lagan Valley) was the winner for the Millar clan taking a clean win on the Yellow course.

Denis Reidy (Organiser), Donal Wickham (Controller) and Aonghus O'Cléirigh (Planner/Mapper) of the organising club Ajax produced a faultless, high quality event which must rank as a leading League event if not championship standard.

Two maps were used, the original Bull Island map and a new northern section, as technical as the first and deemed by some more so because of fewer large features.

See Results See Routes

Peter Kernan

News wanted!
Pieces published here don't have to be big: if you have any reports on events, any news of interest to orienteers, any plans, suggestions or proposals, stories or histories, please e-mail them to the editor for consideration for TIO.

The O-Bits column in The Irish Orienteer has always been a miscellany of orienteering news from around the country and around the world and I'd like to keep it that way.

One concern, which I have raised before, is that those of you who have access to and are comfortable with the internet can get all the information, results, entry forms, Routegadget action replays etc, very easily. There are many others who don't have access to this, or who prefer to have a printed page in front of them.

In 50 years time, will anyone bother to search the electronic archives for information on Irish orienteering in the early days? Will future technologies allow us to search things as primitive as PC's or the internet? Nowadays we can still read printed information published hundreds of years ago: the printed word is more powerful and more permanent than characters on a computer screen.

Having said that, it is far easier to type something on here and have it available around the world almost instantly, than to grapple with layout, desktop publishing, printing, enveloping and posting a printed version.

In a reversal of this process I hope to publish archive material here, once I can bring myself to venture into the cobwebby attic to search.

JMcC

Junior Issues

Colm Hill reveals some of the behind-the-scenes activity at a recent Sprint-O event run by the Leinster Junior Squad

Up before the sunrise.....

Controls and SI boxes in the bomber vests. First thing you notice is that it’s cold, very cold. Then you notice that annoying drizzle that wets everywhere and everything, it being January and all that. Then comes that moment when you realise you actually volunteered for this of your own free will. That's what orienteering does to you.
The second Irish Junior Squad Sprint-O event was in UCD, Belfield. The course was planned by Colm Hill and controlled by Niamh O’Boyle, with her mother, Bernie, as acting controller on the day. Niamh was horrified at the first draft for the long course with the distance around the 6 km mark and 40 controls. Realising we didn't have that many SI boxes and the fact that it’s a so-called sprint series, the course was modified to make it a more humane course ....slightly.... the long course ended up at 3.9 km with 28 controls, and the short 1.6 km with 13 controls.
On the day, Ruairí Short, Bernie, Fiach, Colm and Kevin (somehow I got all the far controls) could be seen running around with chains and padlocks, securing the SI units to any immovable object. As the Juniors were putting out controls, Conor Short had the SI system up and running with Don marshalling everyone including Colm before he had a stress breakdown (planning is more difficult that it sounds). The event was ready to get cracking by 10:00 am. As the runners went out, the conditions got worse. The sheets of rain could be seen sweeping across the car park, including that special wind that never makes up its mind on what direction it wants to blow in.
One of the first runners through the car park was Darren Burke. He looked tired. A big grin could be seen on Colm’s face- the course was making the good orienteers suffer. More orienteers could be seen running in circles over by the engineering building as controls were scattered everywhere. As confused orienteers ran left and right, the results looked as if Darren's time of 26:52 would win it, but to the dismay of Darren, Ger Butler could be seen flying across the car park. He caught the last 2 controls and finished in a fast time of 23:11.
On the short course, Jonathan Quinn had it all his own way coming home in 15:29 with Laura Kelly almost a further 3 minutes back.

The main discussion point of the course was leg 19 with the uncrossable fence. When putting out controls a gate was discovered. This we quickly blocked as best we could. Some orienteers fell into the trap only for someone to knock down the gate- it’s obvious who fell into the trap on splits browser. Dave Masterson put it best after the event, " Sure I've been in UCD half my life, I intended to go that way and if it was locked I would have climb the fence, its only 7ft with no barbed wire". (He was quietly informed of the sprint-O “no crossing uncrossable fences” rule). For those that didn't check their control descriptions around the steps, you can thank UCDO for the control site from the night-O a few weeks back.

As the day came to a close the control collecting duties were given out and everyone ran in different directions. As is normal, once you get given your controls, you run as fast as you can so not to get another five added to your list. With one slight problem: Colm forgot to hand out the keys!! (O, and what’s that? I'm gone to the furthest control, in the rain) This affected everyone with the exception of Marcus, who returned with the control and chain in one hand, a smile on his face and...a lock cutters in the other.
The final junior spring series event is at Killiney Hill, Co. Dublin, on Sunday March 2nd.
A wet, tired and cold junior – Colm Hill

Junior News
Last weekend’s Irish Junior Squad training weekend in West Cork attracted more than twenty aspiring team members to the squiggly contours, man-eating marshes and craggy open mountainside which characterize the area. Cork O’s Darren Burke and Ailbhe Creedon and IOA Juniors Officer Ruth Lynam concocted a menu rich in variety, with two sessions on Saturday at the adjacent Carrigalougha and Derragh maps. Both these areas are open mountainside and have been used for the Shamrock O-Ringen.

The juniors, aging from M/W14 to M/W18, showed no fear, coping with the contours and the cold with aplomb.
The sessions included a line event (a line on the map with unmarked controls: follow the line to find the controls), control pair exercises and a range of circular courses which could be tailored to the needs and ability of each individual. The afternoon finished with a tricky course running back to the cars, followed by a game of marsh football (a west Cork specialty pioneered by Bernard Creedon and CorkO some years ago). For the record, the match was a draw but nobody is too sure of the score.
Saturday night had talks on course planning by Brian Corbett and Darren Burke and Ruth Lynam outlined the plans for the Junior Squad in 2008.
A Munster League event at nearby Tir na Spidoige on Sunday finished off the weekend (and nearly finished off some of the juniors too, if the snores in the car on the way home were anything to go by!). Darren’s courses were challenging and made the trip well worthwhile.

You can see the courses and routes on Routegadget here.

JMcC.

Junior Plans 2008
The next Junior Squad weekend is in Leinster on March 8/9. The sessions wil include time trials in the Furry Glen at the Phoenix Park and relay training in a forest near Castledermot in Co. Kildare. On Sunday the juniors will take in Fingal's event at Castletown House, Celbridge.

Junior tours this year include the JK in the south of England at Easter, the Danish Spring Cup in March, the Swedish 5-Day in July and the French 6 Jours d'Aveyron in August. Representative events include the Junior World Championships near Gothenburg in Sweden at the end of June, the European Junior Championships in Belgium at the end of August, the Junior Home International near Liverpool in late September and the European Youth O-Champs in Switzerland in October.
For more details visit the Irish Junior Squad web site.

Black Night by Slade

Marcus Geoghegan is nothing if not a perfectionist, so when 60 minutes had elapsed with no sign of the front runner, Ger Butler, on the 4 km Long course, doubts started to creep in.

"Have I overdone it..some of it is tricky..there's some rough bits..." he starts muttering.

Standing under an umbrella by the car with a light implanted in his head it was dark and wet. His concern wasn't helped by the headlamp walking by the car reading a map ... this isn't a normal route choice "...WHERE did you get this manky piece of forest..." spits the headlamp and grumbles off.

It's a strange sight: 20 or so cars thrown up on the side of the road by the forest, it's dark, wet and misty... no street lights ... frightening for townies like us. Apparently a local had pulled up and roared at the sight of the cars ..."What's going on here lads?". Probably expecting some normal pursuit like badger baiting, he turned on his heels quickly when invited to take part in a spot of night orienteering.

The young Shorts, Ruarí and Conor, clatter up in their spikes to the car, grab control descriptions and go. Tall and light, they're seasoned O-soldiers at this stage, a couple of kilometres on a wet night in February is nothing to them, a mere skirmish.

Finally a finisher... Ger Butler comes in. Shakes his head at the time and the missed controls, the one on the hide lost him time... it's a story that will be repeated. Marcus's mood improves immensely - going from zero to one finisher is a big step.
After that finishers start rolling in. Despite the numerous tracks and relatively open forest, the mist makes picking up controls in the forest tricky. Stories abound of the one that got away.

Ruarí Short wins Long in front of Philip Brennan with Mary O'Connell snatching third ahead of Martin Flynn and Conor Short. Andrew O'Mullane leads in a small field on the short ahead of a brace of Redmonds and Patrick O'Brien. Old names on young shoulders.

Finally I'm sent of on my allotted task with Gavan and Tony, control collecting, the pinnacle of orienteering tasks. My choice of an LED bike light as I was going out the door proves unwise ... at 10:20 pm I can't find the last control. Mobile phone calls in Marcus to sweep up the one in the hide.
Back on the road everyone is gone ... as though it never happened.

It's a strange one, night orienteering. You can't get it on Playstation or by pressing the red button. You have to go out in the black dark. There's one left in the Dublin series ... worth a try.

Peter Kernan

(Peter was at the AJAX night event at Slade, near Saggart, Co. Dublin, last Tuesday night. The final Dublin By Night event for the season is Phoenix Park on Saturday February 16th. Courses of about 9 and 5 km ..., starting between the US Embassy and the Ordnance Survey. Turn left 500 m NW of the Phoenix Monument, 6.30-7.30 pm. Adults only!).

But wasn't Black Night by Deep Purple, not Slade?

BAOC O-Planning Course report

Mary Healy attended a planning course in the UK. Here she reports on the experience ...

A WEEK IN AN ORIENTEERING BOOTCAMP

If anyone had told me that a week of sleeping in a dormitory and working from 8.30 am till maybe 11 pm at night, with sometimes only 15 minutes for lunch, could be exhilarating fun, I’d have said ‘Yeh, Right!’. But that’s what it was.

With a last minute invitation from the IOA to go on a Planners’ course, I found myself on a Monday morning in June on a Heathrow-bound plane, on my way to Longmoor Camp in Surrey, where the British Army Orienteering Club (BAOC) hold courses in both course planning and orienteering skills. Every three months, they gather their handpicked team of experienced instructors from all over Britain, to run these courses for British army orienteers. In recent years, our army has also been invited to participate but last July was the first time the IOA were invited. The IOA were offered one place on the Planners course and one on the Orienteering Skills course. The notice was extremely short though and the IOA had to find people who could take a week off immediately. Niall Ewen (Ajax & Irish Junior Squad) and I were available and lucky enough to be able to take up these places.

From the minute we reached the centre, all outside life ceased to exist. Our time was scheduled from dawn to bed. I can only speak for my own course content, as I was too busy to have any chance to check out Niall’s course, other than seeing that he’d made friends. And he made plenty of them. The camaraderie between participants was huge, the philosophy being – ‘We all muck in together and get the job done!’
On my Planners course, as I had expected, every ‘i’ was dotted and every ‘t’ crossed. Nothing was left to your interpretation. Everything was spelt out and no stone left unturned in itemising every detail of a Planner’s role in staging an orienteering event. We were treated to 17 lectures in 4 days, from Monday lunchtime to Friday lunchtime! AND we had practical exercises out in the forest. AND we had Homework (!) every evening. Luckily, we got PowerPoint handouts on everything, so we weren’t on overdrive from note-taking and could just listen and absorb instead.
Lectures were on everything from Technical Difficulty to Choosing Legs and even a whole lecture on Taping! Now, what would you think should be included on Taping? If you thought of it, it’s there, e.g. ‘Do not write in Red on Red tape.’ What’s more, we then did a practical exercise on it! Out we went into the forest, literally on our doorstep, armed with our roll of electrical insulation tape, a map with control sites and instructions to check sites already taped. Another day, we got to tape our own newly planned courses and then – With-A-Different-Colour-Tape – check someone else’s taping.
We even got a lesson on OCAD, the computer program used to draw orienteering maps and courses, in one of four lectures one morning. To be honest, this was about the only weakness of the course. You could give a whole course just on OCAD alone. Half an hour on it just wasn’t enough for people who never experienced it, who were then expected to use it to draw up courses. Most struggled with it. This was the first time OCAD was included on the course. To be fair, they want to give a complete and comprehensive course on Planning, with everything that needs to be covered included in it. It’s up to the participants to go away and work on the content. They could lengthen the course duration, but it’s not realistic to expect people to give more than a week to such a course. So, in retrospect, it is better to have a rushed introduction to OCAD than none at all.
It wasn’t all slog though. We got out into the forest, on average, three times a day, on practical exercises of 30-60 minutes, which were a welcome stretch and freshened us up for the next session. One such exercise was a Sprint race, where all 50 or so, from both courses, went off at 1 minute intervals, around the centre’s many buildings and woods. Excellent fun! 60% were caught out on their way to No 1 - they didn’t notice the uncrossable fence on the map, until they were almost within reach of the control. I was just about to punch, when one guy approached the fence and called me. I thought “What am I going to do, if he asks me to punch his emit (electronic punch) card for him?” It was OK though - he just asked if that was the first control. Whew! Anxiety over!
Homework consisted of planning courses and drawing them with control descriptions up beautifully on OCAD. Now, at 5.30 pm, when you’re finished lectures, the last thing you want to do is spend much time on your homework. But each evening after dinner we returned, like dutiful students, to the classroom. Some were quicker than others. Whizz, whizz – courses planned. Others, like me, could be likened to a good whiskey, which improves with time. So we mulled over our courses a lot longer. Hence, by the time we finished, we were leaving at 11-11.30 pm! All hope of a nightcap in the bar was forgotten, as we fell straight into our beds, to recover in time for class at 8.30 next morning. The one time I did succumb to a bit of leisure time before bed, I was up and at my desk at 7.00 am, to get things done!
In a conversation with Colin Dickson, the Course Co-ordinator, an M50 and many times British Champion, he told me that the course centre was chosen for all the necessary onsite facilities it offered – quiet location; permanent orienteering building - with classrooms, computer room with OCAD 9 installed on all seven PCs, toilets, kitchen, equipment room; accommodation dormitories; restaurant providing full board – food was excellent to my mind; bar with TV. We didn’t ever need to leave the place. Although, the last night, we all went to the local pub instead, for a meal out, which was a good social end to a hard week’s work.
So, if any of you are offered the opportunity by the IOA to go on another one of these BAOC courses – Planner or Orienteering Skills – I say “Go for it!” It’s a brilliant opportunity. Top class instructors, who couldn’t do enough for anyone, all necessary facilities provided, packed but excellent course content. Be warned – it’s intense, it’s demanding, but it’s extremely rewarding and well worth doing. Essential, I’d say, if you aspire to being as fully qualified as you can be, to get the job done right.
But don’t forget your sleeping bag, unless you want to sleep under the grey hairy blankets that were provided, like Niall and I had to do, instead of all the snug-looking sleeping bags everyone else knew to bring!

Mary Healy,
GEN.

(Photos: Mary Healy at the 2007 Irish Relays in Wexford; Niall Ewen at Longmoor).

Orienteering News

Get ready for the JK …

The Northern Ireland Orienteering Association has announced that they will be hosting the 2011 Jan Kjellstrom international orienteering festival. The “JK”, as it is known, is the premier multi-day orienteering competition run under the auspices of BOF, the British Orienteering Federation.

Jan Kjellstrom was a young Swedish orienteer who came to Britain in the 1960’s and helped establish the sport there. He was tragically killed in a car accident in 1967 and the first JK was run later that year in his memory. Nowadays the event can attract 3000 competitors.

The JK features four days of orienteering: a two-day individual on Saturday and Sunday, a Relay on Monday, and another event on the Friday, which in 2008 will be a sprint race.

The events take place over the Easter weekend, which in 2011 will be on April 22^nd -25^th.

The NIOA are no strangers to running major events: the Junior, Senior and Veteran Home Internationals and the Irish and British Championships have all been run in Northern Ireland, but this will be the biggest in terms of numbers.

Just as the 2012 Olympics is expected to have a positive spin-off effect for Ireland, JK2011 will have a major impact on raising the profile of orienteering on the whole island.

The NIOA is smaller than lots of orienteering clubs in other countries and this is a huge undertaking. The IOA plans to cooperate with NIOA to organise a series of complementary events to make the whole ”Irish Orienteering” experience a successful one. Hopefully, just as the fire engines from Dublin, Drogheda and Dundalk raced to help when Belfast was burning after a German air raid on 16th April 1941, orienteers all over the island will be happy to lend a hand when the time comes for the JK, 70 years later almost to the day.

A meeting of interested volunteers will take place in Dungannon Rugby Club, Co, Tyrone, on 13^th February. The event co-ordinator is Harold White.

Irish Championships entries open

Cork Orienteers have started taking entries for the Irish Championships at the beginning of May. Entries are being accepted online for the three day competition on May 3-4-5 on Bere Island in West Cork.

Bere Island has been used for the Shamrock O-Ringen in the past, the detailed open mountainside with spectacular sea views providing fast running with challenging navigation.

The plan for the weekend is to have the Classic race (normal distance) on the Saturday, Relay on the Sunday and Middle Distance on the Bank Holiday Monday. This will probably mean travelling down on the Friday for most people. Unlike Inisbofin, Bere Island is only a short hop from the mainland, so staying in Castletownbere or thereabouts should be possible.

Entries close on March 31^st.

Details from Cork Orienteers

Team Work

Division of Labour
Probably none of us would consider orienteering a team sport. We like to think of ourselves as independent, self-sufficient, able to survive on our own in harsh conditions. Mild eccentricity is tolerated; expected, even, if we think of the stereotypical orienteer. But at heart it is a team sport, in the sense of teamwork rather than in, say, the football sense.

I have heard it said, in the context of children’s sports, that the two teams are not enemies or rivals, but partners: without the other team there could be no game. This is true in orienteering where, without the other clubs, none of us would get very many competitions. It is even more true at the level of the IOA Executive, where the team pulls the sport through and drives orienteering forward.

What do the IOA do, you may wonder. Without their administrative and coordinating role, we could not be members of the International Orienteering Federation and could not run in international competitions; we would have no insurance; no co-ordinated fixtures list; no Sports Council funding for development or coaching. In short, without the IOA we would be back to the beginning of orienteering here.

And who are these people who keep the sport going: the Chairman, Secretary, Treasurer and so on? They are ordinary orienteers like you and me, with jobs to do during the day; volunteers with other things to do as well as devote time to their (our) sport. Surprisingly, two of the jobs on the executive remain unfilled since last year’s AGM. We have no Development Officer and no Honorary Secretary, while the Chairman also serves as the Mapping Officer. A welcome development, however, is the appointment of GEN’s Aine Joyce as the IOA administrative assistant.

Even more surprisingly, the 9 jobs on the executive are filled by members of just 5 clubs. There are benefits to be gained for your club by having representatives on the IOA, even though they are there to serve the sport as a whole and not their club constituents. Why don’t more clubs put their members forward to the Executive?

The IOA Executive committee now has 11 positions, 8 of which are filled
by Leinster clubs, one by a Munster club and two positions are vacant.
Though they have been very involved in IOA in the past, te two biggest clubs in Munster, for instance, currently have nobody on the IOA Executive Committee and have not had any for some time. Similarly for other active clubs in other ares. A relatively small club, Ajax, has three members filling four spots on the Executive.
So the (small) Leinster clubs do most of the administration and clubs
countrywide get the benefit. Or viewed another way: why should Leinster
do all the work? Is this right? Another view is that there are advantages for your club to being involved in the IOA: you can influence policy; you can avail of various initiatives that other clubs might not bother with; you can hear about opportunities and make international contacts.

Whichever view you subscribe to, there is an opportunity there for the taking: your sport needs you. (The IOA AGM is usually on during the Irish Championships at the beginning of May).