The Limerick Blogger - latest Limerick news and Limerick events

Pictured: Members of the Socialist Party with their petition to stop proposed cuts in the HSE

Fears continue for the future of the Accident and Emergency department at St. John’s Hospital, as well as the future of other services in the midwest including those at Nenagh and Ennis hospitals.

Campaigning to stop planned health cuts have kicked off in the region this week with members of the Socialist Party collecting 5,000 signatures in a petition over the weekend in the City Centre.

A public forum on the proposed cuts is also set to take place on July 29th at the Pery Hotel.

In a statement on the cuts, Socialist Party spokesperson for Limerick Cian Prenderville had this to say;

The threat to St.John’s is both real and dangerous. One in four beds at the hospital have been shut down in the last year due to lack of resources. The HSE still haven’t published the Teamwork report, but all the evidence suggests they are implementing it by stealth. Another recent leak confirmed their plans to shut Nenagh A&E, and now the HSE have announced 112 health jobs to go in Limerick. Well, I say enough is enough - we need to use this forum on July 29th to get organised and build a campaign to stop the cuts

It has been a busy week or so in sports-related stories, so here is a brief recap of some of what’s happened.

GAA

It was a case of bad-week good-week for Limerick GAA. The Gaelic grounds hosted three big games over the last eight days, starting with the bad where the county hurlers season ended at the hands of Offaly where they were on the receiving end of a ten point defeat. It was a very disappointing end to the season for last years All Ireland finalists. Coach Richie Bennis said “I am not going to pull out. I am happy to stay with the set-up. I will help Limerick any way I can.” On Sunday, a record crowd of over 48,000 for the ennis road venue turned up to watch Tipp beat clare fairly comprehensively and as predicted by many the traffic afterwards was brutal with people complaining that it took over three hours to escape!!

Last night however some pride was restored to Limerick GAA and in a big way! The footballers were in action out and the gaelic grounds where the opposition were Meath. It was the first time in 121 years that the teams had met in the championship! The men from Leinster were hot favourites to win the game and if you were told that in the last five minutes Meath scored three goals you would think that they had a very comfortable win!! However a name should now be inserted into proceedings…. His name is Ian Ryan. For those of you wondering who his is, he was playing full forward for Limerick and over the course of 70 minutes he scored a total of 3-07 for Limerick.. This would certainly be judged as a major shock in the football championship. Limerick lead at half time by 2-06 to 3 points and at one stage they were twenty points to the good!! Despite Meaths’ goal scoring spree at the end it was too little too late and Mickey Ned O’Sullivan’s men won by 9 points on a scoreline of 4-12 to 4-03. Colm Coyle has resigned as manager of the Meath football team as a result of last nights defeat.

Boxing

Normal service resumed for Andy Lee out at the University Arena last night as the Castleconnell man got his career back on track with a tenth round knockout of American Willie Gibbs last night. The fight watched by a live crowd of about 4,000 people was also shown live on RTE 2 and the Limerick man dominated the fight all the way through. The American connected with a right hook that opened a wound on Lees forehead in the final round as he went all out to try and knock out the home man as he was trailing on the scorecards. However Andy fought back and floored Gibbs with a right hook that George Hook would have been proud of! Gibbs corner threw in the towel with some six seconds of the bout to go giving Lee the knockout victory.

Rugby
Munster have appointed another Australian to the their coaching staff with Laurie Fisher taking over from Jim Williams. Bad news for coach Tony McGahan however are the reports that Denis Leamy will be out of action until at least the end of November as he is due to undergo a shoulder reconstruction operation tomorrow.

The fixtures list for the Magners league and Heineken cup competitions have been announced and the first Munster game to be played at the new Thomond park will be in the magners league versus the Glasgow warriors on the first weekend of OCtober. Munsters first Heineken cup game at the newly developed stadium will be the following week on Friday the 10th of October against French club Montauban. Tv coverage for the first four pool games have been revealed and all of the Red armys games will be live on sky sports.

To get an idea of how the works going on to create the new Fortress Thomond are going check out standupandbuild.com (Broadband required)

Soccer

It’s not quite Lazarus stuff as the super blues weren’t at deaths door but things have taken a turn for the better in recent weeks…. What Ian ryan is to the footballers, the name gary Sheehan is fast coming to prominence to soccer fans in the first division. Sheehan had a man of the match winning performance as he scored a brace as Limerick 37 beat Dundalk at Oriel park at the end of June. After that encouraging win things have progressed… New signing Sheehan who is one of about 16 players who have signed for the blues in recent weeks has set things on fire and bagged another two goals in a four nil demolition of Kildare county at Jackman park on the 4th of July! The blues travelled to Tolka park to play Shelbourne the following week and this time Sheehan was denied a third man of the match award by goalie Davie Ryan. Limerick were down to ten men for much of the game after Wayne Colbert received a second yellow before half time. Ryan saved a penalty but not to be outdone Sheehan scored another two goals as the blues had another impressive away win to beat the table toppers!! And last friday night the good road form continued with another two nil win away to Monaghan. The blues are now in fifth place in the league on 27 points, seven clear of 6th placed Longford. The gap to fourth placed Fingal is eight points so some way to go yet but if the form continues like this everyone will be happy. Next up at Jackman park next friday are the Wexford Youths. the funboys will probably be parading their lovely pink outfits so do come and support the super blues, kick off at 7.45pm.

Gardai arrested two women yesterday in an operation against a suspected brothel operating out of the Hilton Hotel on the Ennis Road.

Staff at the hotel became suspicious after an increased number of male visitors to the room was observed.

At 1600 hrs yesterday, Gardai raided the hotel room and arrested two women, A Spanish and Brazilian national in their 20s.

Computer hardware as well as CDs were also seized.

According to the Evening Herald website, the two women are suspected of using the internet to pedal their services, with customers making contact via mobile phone.

The Limerick Leader reports on their website that the two women were due before a sitting of the District Court earlier today.

As most of you probably noticed, we just changed our domain from limerickblogger.org to limerickblogger.ie, which we feel suits the site better.

Search engines put new domain names in a “sandbox” for a few months, which means they rarely rank highly in search results — which will of course hurt us. This can be avoided by having links point to the new domain, though. So this post is to say that if you currently have a link to The Limerick Blogger at our old address (.org), we’d really appreciate it if you’d change it to point to limerickblogger.ie.

Also, we work pretty hard to help all Limerick blogs and sites by linking to them in the sidebar. If you read this and have a site, we’d really appreciate a link in return.

Lastly, if there are any Limerick blogs that we don’t currently link to, please let us know so that we can add them.

Cheers,

The Editors

Representatives of groups who campaigned for skate park facilities in Limerick have been refused permission to speak at the opening of the new park on Friday.

The reason given by Council officials is that it is not normal protocol.

More later.

UPDATE Some new information. While skateboard activist Tom Shortt was not invited to speak at the event, he was asked what he would like to have said, which would have been said on his behalf.

In September 2007, Patrick Coleman passed away after a violent attack near his home in Carew Park. The much loved Mr. Coleman left behind many friends who have now banded together to celebrate his life with a good-humoured event befitting of the man.

A benefit night is to take place at Dolans on Friday the 18th of July with numerous events.

The whole thing kicks off at 1800 hrs with Kids face painting, magicians and fire eaters. For the grown ups there will be live music from Seneca Vesta Varro The Funk Junkies Escapade Walter Mitty and the Realists and Andi Mooney, as well as comedy acts.

As well as that, there will be DJ sets from Pippy Phil Wade Cian Frawley Niall Colgan Cait Collins and Paul Tarpey

Tickets for the events are €10 and are availible from Dolans and Mickey Martins.