One bonus associated with the Musgrave Crumlin Children's Hospital Inter-Club Challenge is that the winning team from each province gets to bring its captain to the national finals in Portugal.
And that's where Martin Harney, last year's captain at Nuremore Hotel and Golf Club, vowed that he'd like to go back in 1999 as a player - and not just as a lucky charm! So it was that Harney managed to emerge from the qualifying competition at his home club to compete in the provincial final and Harney's day of reckoning is fast approaching because the provincial finals of the competition - which last year raised £42,439 towards ongoing development work at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children, a figure that will be exceeded this year - are due to take place over an eight day period later this month. Nuremore have home advantage in their quest to defend the Ulster title which takes place at the fine Co. Monaghan complex next Tuesday (September 7th).
The first provincial final of the competition - which is run under the rumble format - will take place at Mullingar Golf Club next Monday when, by co-incidence, the same three players (Percy Vince, Plunkett Walshe and Niall Miller) who successfully represented Grange in last year's inaugural competition will seek to defend their provincial title. Among the 24 clubs challenging Grange for the crown will be Turvey, who are competing in their first-ever Leinster finals, and who are represented by the all-woman team of Berni White, Dympna McCusker and Mary Berenger.
Clonakilty club Dunmore will defend their Munster title at Beaufort on Thursday week, while Galway, who went on to win the national title, will defend the Connacht crown at Roscommon on September 13th. The winners of the four provincial finals will compete in the week-long national finals in the Algarve region of Portugal on October 2nd-9th.
Stackstown followed up last year's success in the Barton Cup with victory in the Metropolitan Cup over the weekend. Having taken four matches from the first leg at Clontarf, Stackstown were always favourites for the second leg and they duly delivered, winning the six points necessary for an overall win of 11 1/2 points to 6 1/2.
