Walshestown Youth Club teaching the art of darts and rings

WHEN Walshestown Youth Club made an application at Drogheda Court for a licence to promote a series of weekly draws to help finance the running of their club, assistant secretary, Patrick Caffrey, was asked what amenities the centre had to offer its teenage members.

‘Well, your honour, said Mr. Caffrey, “we have the use of the old schoolhouse and we teach our members to play darts and rings and we hope to have some table tennis going.”

“That’s the first time I have ever heard of anyone teaching young boys to play darts and rings,” commented Justice D. Dunleavy, adding “I didn’t know how to play those games until I was old enough to buy myself a pint. “Why don’t you teach them to play Gaelic football or something like that ? Why teach them to play darts and rings? Are you trying to prepare them for the pubs?.

“No Your Honour,” said Mr. Caffrey, “we are trying to keep them out of the pubs.”

“Well, I think it’s a crazy idea to teach darts and ring playing in a youth club. Certainly the idea of a youth club is a wonderful one and I congratulate all concerned with it, but to teach rings and darts to boys between the ages of 14 and 17 is just crazy.

“Perhaps,” continued the Justice, “we in authority are getting so old fashioned that we can’t understand things. We just stand back, listen and are flabbergasted at what is happening around us.

“Long ago,” he went on, “those in authority, Church and State, would stand up and preach against things, but now we just stand back aghast. We see young, long-haired people hanging around the colleges, prostrating themselves in protest. What does one do to make them get up ? The Gardai are afraid to go near them for fear they might get a dart of a drug or something. I think the time has come for us to go back to our old-fashioned preaching, no matter how unpopular it makes us.”

Justice Dunleavy added, at this point, that his references to darts and rings might have been made a bit facetiously ‘perhaps they are not such a bad Idea.’

Mr. Caffrey : “We are going to promote outdoor games as well.

Justice: I think you should. Football is a good game. So indeed is fishing. And there are plenty of rivers around here. He granted the application which was moved, on behalf of the club, by Mr. William James, solicitor.