Saturday 29th August will always be a special day in the Club’s history as we look forward to 2021 and celebrate 50 years of activity. On that day Sean Tobin won the National 10000m Gold medal and led his club mates David Mansfield and Paul Minogue to National 10000m Club Champions, achievements never witnessed in the Club’s history to date, powerful performances all round. The Club is currently going through a rich form of achievements as we have achieved notable National successes in Cross Country, Road and Track over the past number of years at all levels. This is true testament to the voluntary work put in by so many people over the years and it is great to see such work reaping these achievements.
Back to the action and the 10000m race was building up to a great event with a high-quality field taking part, including our Club team of Sean Tobin, David Mansfield and Paul Minogue. The pressure was on Sean as he played a major role in that trilling 1500m a week ago when he was denied the Gold medal on the line. The race started and Sean had a race plan and he executed it to the last detail. In the early part of the race Sean was well positioned in the leading pack led by Mick Clohisey of Raheny Shamrocks and it included all the leading contenders. The pace was strong with the leaders reaching 5k in 15 minutes. Then as the leaders approached the 8k mark, Sean makes his move and soon the leading group of seven athletes were in Indian file as Sean increased the pace and soon had a good lead. He maintained that strong pace over the final few laps to come home a very convincing winner in 29 mins 35.14 secs, powerful performance and a Club record. Sean in his interview afterwards admitted that he found the last 600m tough as the body began to tire, still he maintained his composure to win the Gold medal and proud that he was able to bring back this National title to his Club and County having been denied one the previous week. He becomes the first Club man to win this National title. He is a great ambassador for the Sport and a role model for our up and coming Juveniles. I have no doubt that Anthony Moynihan, his club coach, thoroughly enjoyed this performance by Sean as he witnessed many of Sean’s juvenile achievements, be they over the Country or on the Track. Sean is the Golden boy of Irish distance running at the moment and he is one of our own, which is brilliant. We also saw two exceptionally good performances from both David Mansfield and Paul Minogue. Despite the lack of races these athletes have continued to train away as best they could under such strange circumstances, and it was great to see them running so well. David was in the chasing pack for most of the race, running a well-judged race when finishing 19th in a very good time of 31 mins 58.12 secs. Then we had Paul Minogue making his debut in these Championships and he too ran a well-judged race when finishing in a PB of 34 mins 15.95 secs. News came through later in the day that this trio of Club members, Sean, David, and Paul were crowned national Inter Club Senior 10000m Champions, fantastic achievements all round.
Sean capped a brilliant week at the National Championships winning Silver in an epic 1500m that will be talked about in the years ahead as the best race on an Irish track and he followed that up with a mature Golden performance on his debut over 10000m on the track and he was delighted to help bring a coveted National Senior Club title home to Clonmel with great performances also from David Mansfield and Paul Minogue, brilliant ambassadors for the Sport. Hopefully these brilliant performances will be an inspiration to our Junior and Master athletes who will be competing in their respective National Track and Field Championships in Santry this coming weekend.