Colm Revolutionised Sports Broadcasting

It was a testimony to his decade long stint with RTE that led to Colm Murray being headhunted for a newly created Sportscaster job in 1989.  His beginnings in the new television Sports Department that year was not as a result of the American style positive declaration, “You’re Hired,”.  Instead Colm heard some colourful orders which changed his professional life, and then he heard - “You’ll Do,”

Colm died early today, Tuesday, July 30^th after a three year battle with Motor Neuron disease.
The Westmeath man had since the early 1980’s, been one of the main newscasters on the national broadcaster, but following the setting up of the Six One News, there was a hunt for ‘Sportscasters’.  So Colm found himself sent for by head of news, Rory O’Connor, who told him that they were hoping to put sport on the news in a larger format than had been done in previous times.  Ironically Rory also died just a few weeks ago.  At the time, in 1989, he asked Colm to consider taking the job, but the Moate man believed that he knew very little about sport.
But the bossman said to him: “You play golf, you back horses, you go to an odd gaelic football match and you enjoy it, don’t you?”
Colm had to agree with him on everything, but still he was doubtful.
But then the bossman shouted at him in a blue fashion, followed by the welcome words, “You’ll do!”
Colm was in stitches of laughter when he remembered that incident, when this writer interviewed him in 2005.
“That’s how I got the job that I’m in today and that’s what I was told, whether I liked it or not,” laughed Colm, eight years ago.
Colm Murray was the first man who had to set the plan for the presentation of television sport on RTE in ’89, and had to do it fast!  On his first day he had three or four minutes of television to fill and hadn’t a clue what to put on.  He needed pictures for his broadcast, and he found an interesting, albeit humorous sports story.
“The battle for me was to get pictures and I got pictures from Shelbourne Park of a great greyhound of the time called Randy,” laughed Colm.  “So the first picture I put on was Randy the Greyhound, running around for sixty or seventy seconds.”
Although it was a battle, it was also a dream job for the Moate born and bred horse racing lover. 
It wasn’t a road he had envisaged he’d travel when he was growing up in the family home, which was situated over their grocery shop in Church St., Moate.  His main hobby at the time was drama, but he inherited his sports passion for horse racing from his late father, Michael.  His first meeting was in Kilbeggan and he was enthralled by the carnival atmosphere at Westmeath’s popular race course.  He loved the scene of the bookies out on the course, and looking at the horses, and seeing the colours of the jockeys’ silks.
“When I got older I used to study the form and when I could get my hands on a half crown I’d place it on an outsider, hoping to win it, those are my earlier memories of Kilbeggan, and Roscommon Race Course, and of course Galway,” said Colm.
Moate was a great town to grow up in the 1960’s, Colm said, and he was proud of it being the near the centre of Ireland.
Finding himself too tall to be a jockey, Colm decided to go the more conventional route of employment, by studying at UCG and Maynooth College, eventually ending up as a secondary school teacher.  Before his RTE days he taught at the Athlone Vocational School and then in Tullamore Vocational School. 
It was at the Co. Offaly school that Colm met and fell in love with another teacher, Ann, who became his future wife, Ann.  The couple had two daughters Patricia and Kate.
Ar Dheis De Go Raibh Anam Dilis

Athlone Folk Doing Charity Skydive

(as published in Westmeath Examiner)

 

A group of volunteer health professionals from Westmeath came together in 2009 and formed ‘Immunisation 4 Life’ to organise immunisation programmes and child health clinics for under 5s in the poorer countries of the world and to provide support to existing charities in emergency situations.

 The group consists of experienced Public Health Nurses and Doctors with Dr Kevin Connolly (former Consultant Paediatrician, Portiuncula Hospital Ballinasloe) as Medical Director. In addition to Dr. Connolly, founder members include Lucy Brady (nee Ledwith) originally from “Harristown” Ballymore and now living at Corr,  Walderstown, Athlone and Maura Moran, (nee Galvin) from Moate.

 

In 2011, ‘Immunisation 4 Life’ created a partnership with a well-established charity in Zambia, called the NERI Clinics, ( www.nericlinics.org ) which has a busy Primary Health Care clinic in the Linda Province on the outskirts of the capital Lusaka. The NERI Clinics are managed by two Irish GPs and run by qualified health professionals from Zambia. To date Immunisation 4 Life has undertaken six trips to the NERI Clinics involving 30 volunteers. The average trip lasts for 10 days and the volunteers travel on their own time, taking holidays from work and paying for the trip themselves.

Lucy Brady is one of the driving forces behind the group. She said, “We have such abundance here and it takes very little to make a huge difference in other people’s lives. Maura Moran, who I know from my schooldays, is a Public Health Nurse working in County Galway and through her we were able to make contacts with many health professionals and together we started this charity.

“In addition to looking at immunisation we are also very interested in providing support to address the problem of malnutrition which isn’t just a case of lack of food but rather lack of appropriate food. On one of our early trips to Zambia we surveyed the nutritional status of children under 5 years in the Linda Province and found that 2% were severely malnourished and 17% had moderate malnutrition. This has serious short and long term implications for the health and wellbeing of these children and in order to address the problem we developed a nutritional programme which involved recruiting and training the Community Health Workers to screen for malnutrition and then to assist in running a weekly nutrition and under 5s clinic where moderately malnourished children attend for extra feeding or supplementary feeding. Up to 150 children attend this weekly clinic at any one time where they are monitored for progress until they have achieved ideal weight for height, and maintain it for 4 weeks.

“Without this clinic many of the children with severe malnutrition would be referred to the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka where they would be admitted for at least 8 weeks. A family member, usually the mother has to stay with the child which is disruptive to family life and could compromise the wellbeing of other children at home. And also unfortunately the mortality rates are very high at 30%. It is too soon to gather data on the success of the nutrition clinics we have developed but we know that we are able to provide the necessary care to these children in their community without the disruption that a hospital stay would cause.

 “We are also committed to providing a rapid response to provide vaccination programmes in emergency situations such as refugee camps, conflict situations and natural disasters. As a dynamic, flexible and motivated group of professionals, our priority is to implement a successful vaccination programme which will benefit thousands of children.  We have a special interest in the measles vaccination but are willing to participate in any vaccination programme that will help save lives.

“We are just at the start of a long journey but already we have seen the difference we can make which spurs us forward. We have recruited volunteers who are highly qualified with relevant medical and nursing experience and we have developed our clinical and administration guidelines. We can offer expertise in immunisation and child health to NGOs and Governments and we support the Millennium Development Goals through education, participation and collaboration with local agencies and relevant groups.

“We are very grateful to all the support that we have received. All the volunteers with Immunisation 4 Life pay for their own flights to Zambia and this means that all funds raised go directly to running the clinics.

“We are always looking at innovative ways to raise funds and I have been recruited to do a parachute jump on Aug 9^th 2013. I am very grateful for the support of friends and family and my fellow parachute-jumpers Conor Brady and Patrick Munnelly.