All classes will return to normal training tonight, Friday September 3rd. The  classes will be as follows:

Beginners are at 5.30 - 6.30

Advanced juniors 7 - 8

Seniors 8 - 9.30

There will be no classes on Monday August 30th for Advanced Juniors and Seniors due to the floor in the hall being worked on following a problem. We expect to be back to normal training times on Friday, however as the workers will still be there during the week this cannot be confirmed. I will post an update to advise on this as soon as I know more

Mr O'Rourke

After a very busy year for the club we will now be taking a well earned rest with no classes for most of August. We will return to our normal training timetable from August 30th. This rest gives most students a good opportunity to rest and feel refreshed for their return in September. For those going to Slovakia however, it will be continued training in preparation for the European Cup in October.

On Sunday June 27th Brian Barrett and Alex Plamadeala were promoted to 1st Degree black belt following an intense day of testing at the ITA Summer Black Belt Grading. The grading was held in Quin, Co Clare and covered all aspects of the Taekwon-Do syllabus including Technical movements, technical kicking, patterns, step sparring, free sparring, self defence, special technique, power and finally theory. Both the guys performed exceptionally well and the standard of all candidates testing was very high. The grading panel on the day included Master Wheatley VII Degree, Mr Ryan V Degree, Mr Byrne V Degree, Mr Looi IV Degree and Mr O'Donoghue IV Degree and narrator for the day was Ms Kinsella IV Degree. All students testing were promoted and on the 26th there was a grading held for those testing for 2nd and 3rd degrees during which all students were promoted also.

The grading was preceded by 6 months of intense one on one training for Brian and Alex for 2hrs every Sunday as well as their normal classes in order to prepare them for the grading. A big thanks also goes to Mr Stephen Cooley VI Degree and Mr Hong Keat Looi IV for their help with preparing Brian and Alex for their grading.

The Irish Cup took place over the weekend of May 29th & 30th with students from the club competing over the 2 days. As always the results and efforts of each and every student competing were excellent. On the first day the cadets and seniors were competing with Gracjan taking Gold in his sparring section in his first ever competition and Ashley taking silver, narrowly missing out on the Gold after the first round ended up a draw. Mark was very unlucky missing out on the Gold after looking certain of having done enough in the first round of the final but it went to a draw and then unfortunately lost out in the extra round. Day 2 was for the juniors and was a great day for the guys. Here Jonathan took gold in the yellow belt sparring section and bronze in the pattern section. A fantastic achievement considering the size of both these categories. Alex, continuing his preparation for his upcoming black belt testing took bronze in patterns and bronze in sparring. A fantastic display of courage from Alex having taking a nasty knock in his semi final decided to compete in his 3rd place playoff and won convincingly. In the green belt sections Hiba and Orla both took silver in their respective divisions having performed very well on the day.

Well done to all who took part including those whose results may not have reflected the great progress they have made in class over the recent months. There will be plenty more chances to compete in the future and every competition brings that added bit of experience. To see some of the photos from the 2 days click on the photos tab to view the album