A reminder that the Athea Ladies Football Club will hold their A.G.M. on this Friday night at 7.30pm in the Clubhouse. As always all members are asked to attend and new members are most welcome. Also it would be nice to see some ‘new faces’ that may be willing to lend a helping hand. And with obesity being a ‘major issue’ among our young people it’s great to see that Athea has many ‘sporting activities’ that all the youth can get involved in.

The A.G.M. of Coiste na nÓg was held on Sunday night last also at the Clubhouse. John Hunt was elected as the new Chairman and he presented a piece of glass to outgoing Coiste Chairman Paul Curry for his work done over the past four years with Coiste. Jacqueline O’Connor and Lisa Hunt were elected as secretary and asst secretary respectively with Tom McEnery remaining as treasurer and Mike Sheahan, Vice Chairman. The young boys and girls will be glad to hear that registration will be on Feb 16^th at the pitch.

Sincere sympathy is extended to the Woulfe family of Keale on the recent death of Catherine Woulfe over the weekend – sympathy also goes to the relatives of Sister Aquinas Liston of Dirreen, Athea  who passed to her eternal reward in England recently – ‘May they rest in peace’.

Just listening to the news and talks on students making their C.A.O. Applications for third level – again a lot of pressure on them to decide what they are going to study. Then a programme comes on called ‘Class-Swop’ – about Irish students who travelled to other European countries to see how their school lives differed from Ireland. In Finland there is ‘no points race’ to enter University  can you believe and their schools in some instances cater for children from 2 – 16 yr olds all in the one building – all mingling with each other and bullying is “NIL” – with a great atmosphere throughout. Academic subjects are important to an extent – however drama, languages and helping students gain confidence is more of a priority. Some students went to Spain  for a swop, where in the classroom students could talk if they wanted to while class was going on, it was up to each individual if they wanted to learn or not – don’t think that would work here!

Isn’t this a lovely time of the year – Christmas over, a stretch in the evenings, the bulbs etc starting to peep through – SPRING IS IN THE AIR.