Jimmy Collins was one of the greats

Dear Sir,

IN LAST week’s Drogheda Independent you mentioned former local athlete Jimmy Collins. Jimmy was indeed one of the fifth generation of the Collins family who plied their hardware trade since 1775 at the famous sign of the ‘Knife & Fork’, just down the road from the Drogheda Independent offices.

Born in 1909, he graduated with a Civil Engineering Degree from UCD and spent the 1930s in the army. Swarthy and moustachioed, he was a magnificent physical specimen of an athlete. He excelled at distances from 100- 800mtrs but his forte was the quarter mile, 400mtrs today. Throughout the 1930s he owned this event in the army setting a forces record that lasted for 15 years. He was one of the mainstays of the hugely successful Drogheda AC of the ’30s, the first golden era of local athletics

In the year of the Berlin Olympics, 1936, Collins won the Irish National 440yds championship at Clonmel and remains the only Drogheda athlete ever to have won this prestigious sprint title. Three times a runner-up, he would surely have won more but for the plethora of legendary quarter men of that time like the famous P.C. Moore, UCD, J. J. Sullivan, UCC, etc.

Jimmy was the first Drogheda man to win an international vest when he was selected to run a 440yds relay leg in a match with France. With multiple county and Leinster titles he was unbeatable in the N. East and his glittering national athletic career has to be seen against the ultra strong competition in the army, gardaí and universities of the period.

He worked as an engineer with Meath County Council. He never forgot that he was from Drogheda and was universally admired and respected as a gentleman around town.

Sadly, his last ten years were tragic. Recently retired, a traffic accident left him paralysed from the neck down and he lived the rest of his life prone on a special electrical bed. He passed away in 1989. One of his daughters was the late popular Dr. Mary Liz Collins who practised in Fair Street.

Jimmy was an inspirational figure and is an integral part of Drogheda’s great athletic history.

Yours, Joe Coyle, Drogheda.