Congratulations to Alex Plamadeala who was selected to represent Ireland at the European Championships in Slovenia in April. Alex will compete in 4 sections: 1st Degree Patterns, -58kg Sparring, Team Patterns and Team Sparring. Everyone at the club is very proud of Alex and wish him the best of luck and as a national team member Alex will receive substantial support from the club as a reward for this fantastic acheivement.

Well done to our team on 17 junior students who competed at the Dublin Region Development Tournament on Sunday Jan 29th. The tournament was set up with an aim of introducing new students to competition and helping improve those who compete regularly. Among the clubs represented were hosts Newlands TKD, IMAA, Portmarnock Donabate and of course ourselves. Every student got the chance to compete in 2 or 3 matches and each one received a medal. There was a lot of positives to take from the day's event and look forward to the next one. A big thank you goes to our hosts Newlands TKD and also to all the umpires.

Happy New Year to all of our members. We hope you all had a great Christmas break and hope everyone has a happy and successful 2012.

We will be back to our normal full time schedule from this coming Friday January 6th. I am looking forward to seeing everyone back training.

A huge congratulations to Dean Lynch who was successfully promoted to 1st Degree Black Belt at the ITA Winter Black Belt Testing in Tralee Co. Kerry last Sunday. Dean has been training for the last 4 & a half years at the club and acheives this rank after working tirelessly during this time in order to perfect each and every aspect of his current Taekwon-Do ability. Well done Dean from everyone at the club. We are all very proud!!

Well done to all our competitors at the Irish Cup. Each one was fantastic and congratulations to the medal winners. Once again the competition was run in a professional manner by the ITA Tournament comittee over the 2 days and the venue at University of Limerick was great for competitors, umpires and supporters . Day 1 had the Cadets and Seniors competing over 3 rings. Our very own Alex Plamadeala was up on the Saturday and took home Silver in the -58kgs Black Belt Division easily winning his first match and narrowly losing out in his next match. This was Alex's first venture into this category so to take the silver is a great acheivement. On the Sunday all our junior comeptitors were taking part, some of whom where taking part in their very first competition. Everyone performed to the best of their abilities and each competitor can be proud of there acheivements.

Here is a list of the results in full:

Almedina Basic - Gold Sparring & Silver Patterns, Kevin Plamadeala - Gold Sparring & Bronze Patterns; Chloe Murphy - Gold Sparring & Bronze Patterns; Hiba Hassan - Silver Sparring; Alex Plamadeala - Silver Sparring; Sergei Baskin - Silver Sparring; Mahd Asif - Bronze Sparring; Dawid Oman - Bronze Sparring; James Finnan - Bronze Sparring