On Monday night past our Club held its 70th AGM. We were founded in 1952 and so have now reached our significant ‘Three-score-years-and-ten’.
The AGM was also historic as it’s the first (of many, no doubt!) to be held in our new Hub building.
A good attendance heard very positive reports on all aspects of our Club’s business, with hard work by many people delivering across the board for us. The Tones are in good shape on and off the field.
Our AGM also delivered changeovers in our Chair and Secretary posts. Sean McCrory finished his five-year term as Chair whilst Marie Quinn has stepped aside after 14 years as Secretary.
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It’s only in looking back that we maybe realise just what Marie has contributed to us.
First, she’s the longest-serving Secretary in our Club’s history, accounting for an enviable 20% of those 70 years.
John Joe Quinn (1952-59) was our previous record-holder and only our unique Paddy Devlin (Club Treasurer now for a phenomenal 33 years and also a past Club Chair and Secretary) has been an office-holder in our Club for longer. In total Paddy has held a major Wolfe Tones Club office for 43 years: that’s over 60% of the lifetime of our Club. It’s simply unrivalled.
Just in passing, our other long-serving Club officers have been: Mickey Loughran, Chair 1955-65 | Patsy McGurk, Chair 1966-76 | Peter Tierney, Treasurer 1952-62 | Gerry McElhatton, Treasurer 1963-72. And Matt Tracey has clocked up the years over different terms as Chair and Secretary.
Back to Marie. During her 14 years in that so-central Secretary role, our Club has, among much, much else:
- Won the Tyrone Intermediate, Junior and Ladies Junior B Championships
- Completed our floodlit second pitch project
- Scoped, planned and delivered our £1.45m Hub project
- Completed many other outside improvements at Gortacladdy
- Raised and invested around £3m in Kildress and its people
- Been part of a GAA County that has won six All-Ireland (2 x Senior, 3 x Minor/U17 and 1 x U21) and 12 Ulster (5 x Senior, 4 x Minor/U17 and 3 x U21) Football titles
And latterly she was of course central to how we dealt with COVID.
That’s some legacy.
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In Sean’s time as Chair we’ve won a Junior Championship, won our first-ever Grade 1 Underage title, put in place our Hub building, smashed all previous fund-raising records and worked our way through COVID. Not a bad five years!
Definitely ‘Cuimhní Croíúla | Uplifting Memories’
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Our new Chair is Dominic McGurk, Secretary for us back in 1999-01, and our new Secretary is Donna Hagan, someone who’s been so central to our Club in so many ways for some time now. We remain in good hands.
For the record, here’s our Wolfe Tones Club Committee for 2021/22:
President: Matt Tracey | Vice-Presidents: Mickey Loughran, Sean McCullagh, John Nugent, Fr Hughes, Fr O’Donnell
Chair: Dominic McGurk | Vice-Chair: Frankie Corey
Secretary: Donna Hagan | Treasurer: Paddy Devlin | Registrar: Eileen Leadon | PRO: Mark Conway | Children’s Officer: Kevin Hughes | Cultural Officer: Nuala Conway | Player Representative: Dean McNally
Committee: Kieran Kelly | Joan McCrory | Sean McCrory | Grace McCullagh | Brian McGurk | Don McKernan | Imelda Muldoon | Caroline Mullin-Beggs | Christopher Potter | Michael Tracey
Trustees: Mark Conway, Martin Keenan, Sean Rafferty (all Club) | Vincent Beggs (Tyrone GAA) | Brian McAvoy (Ulster GAA)
