All roads lead to Kiltegan

SEAN O’TOOLE MEMORIAL 7S TOURAMENT

ON Saturday, the community of Kiltegan along with the GAA clubs of Ballymanus, Rathvilly, and Stratford will come together in Kiltegan to celebrate the memory of Sean O’Toole.

It’s 20 years ago since the

O’Toole family of Barraderry,

Kiltegan, and the Wicklow GAA community were robbed of a loving husband and father, a loyal servant and a renowned leader of men.

Sean’s sons Ciaran and Barry

John are the driving force behind the special occasion.

“It’s marking the 20th anniversary of our father’s passing back in 1997 so we wanted to do something to mark that, do something substantial, and Barry John came up with the idea of doing a sevens tournament because he used to be involved in that here in the early eighties here in Kiltegan.

“So, we invited the clubs that he had an association with, they being Clonmore, where he originally came from, ourselves of course where he won championships, and also Donard, and we’re in the Parish of Rathvilly and we’ve always had a close connection to Stratford and Ballymanus because they’ve also supplied Senior hurlers here in the club over the years,” said Ciaran.

Barry John says that not alone is the day a celebration of their father but it is also a fundraising event for a local child, Alex, who needs to go to Chicago for medical treatment.

“There’s a child in the village here that they’re trying to gather money for, the charity is called Alex’s Adventure, and the her adventure being that she needs to go to Chicago for medical treatment to try and improve her quality of life, she needs a little help so this is us doing our bit. The response that we are after getting from our own club and all the other clubs has been fantastic, overwhelming. Local businesses have come on board, local people want to get involved, it’s really opened our eyes.

“So, we’re starting at 2.30pm, we’ll have our six teams, so we’ll run off group stages, semi-finals penciled in for 5.30pm and 6pm, and then there’s a window of say half an hour or 45 minutes where we hope to have music, a little bit of anovelty thing, we won’t say a whole thing about that, then Amhran na Bhfiann and then the final. Let’s hope it all goes well. We’ll have a marquee here and food and it’s a family day, the car park is closed off and it’ll be a fun day for kinds. It’ll be ran on donations. All proceeds to Alex’s Adventure,” said Barry John.