Sports quiz coup for the Forde family

January 1995

The family of Ferrybank sports enthusiast Gerry Forde can never again complain about his fanaticism. For the Co. Council engineer won trips away for both his daughter and brother in newspaper sports quizzes over the New Year.

Gerry, who is quiz mad, sent in a couple of entries to the Sunday Independent sports quiz over Christmas and put his brother Liam and daughter Grace’s names on the entry forms.

The results of the 80-question quiz were published recently, and lo and behold, the Forde family had scooped first and second prize!

Grace won a trip to a rugby international in either Cardiff or Murrayfield, while Liam won a trip to the Cheltenham Races.

And that’s not all. Gerry was also the runner-up in the Sunday Press sports quiz and won a golf book for his efforts, while he will also share a £1,000 first prize with eleven others after becoming the joint winner of the Irish Independent sports quiz.

To win so many prizes takes a lot of hard work and effort.

A sports publications collector of no mean proportions, Gerry spent up to 60 hours over the Christmas period researching the answers to some of the more difficult questions.

He also enrolled the help of Tony Doran for some of the more tricky GAA questions, while David Medcalf helped out with hockey and Lloyd Wilson gave him a few tennis answers.

‘I would know a lot of the answers myself but I had to do a lot of research to get the answers to the last few,’ he said.

No doubt Gerry has also entered the extremely complicated Sunday Tribune sports crossword competition. Next stop – Mastermind?