Mullingar involvement with London Olympics

“It was the Moores’ destiny to be involved in sport having been born in Dunmore, County Galway,” Jim states proudly. Seven-year-old Jim moved with his family to Mullingar in 1964, ironically the year that Dunmore’s John Donnellan captained the Tribesmen to the first of three consecutive Sam Maguire Cup wins. Indeed, Jim is proud to have attended every All-Ireland senior football final, including replays, from that day to this.The five Moore brothers are closely associated with sport in Westmeath and further afield. “Martin is Mullingar Town personified; similarly Ned with Mullingar Shamrocks; Tom is big into golf; John is synonymous with Westmeath GAA in New York,” Jim says of his male siblings. For his part, Jim played at corner back on The Downs team which defeated Kilbeggan in a low-scoring Flanagan Cup decider in 1980 and also was a teak-tough centre half for Mullingar Town for a dozen years prior to heading across the Irish Sea.Earlier this decade, Jim famously masterminded a plan to bring a group of London-based players to the Dalton Park ground in Mullingar and his under-21 ‘Dream Team’ made local and national headlines between 2001 and 2004. “We reached two FAI under-21 Cup semi-finals, losing narrowly to Waterford United and, under the brilliant managership of Joe O’Hehir, to Cork City who were managed by Pat Dolan and included current full international player Shane Long in their ranks.“I still meets some of the guys in London. They were not a drain on the community and loved the Mullingar people. The whole venture proved to me beyond doubt that Irish people are not racist.” Indeed, original team manager, the affable Leroy Rhodes still lives happily in Mullingar.Jim has resided in London since moving from his role with Bennett Construction in Milltownpass in 1988 and he has been involved professionally in many major stadium projects in the UK in the intervening years, with the Olympic project his latest big money venture in that regard.The new stadium is based in Stratford in “the dead centre of East London” and Jim’s company worked on the railway infrastructure on the East London line. “Westmeath man Adrian Ennis has a pub in the vicinity, while Jim Coffey and Sylvester Geoghegan are others from the county to have secured contracts for the stadium. Up to 11,000 are employed overall and “security is unbelievable, with normal labourers right up to the highest architect all scrutinised through all sorts of security machines.”Lord Coe (Sebastian to you and I when he was one of the world’s greatest middle-distance runners) is heading the London Olympic drive and Jim is aware that former and current British Prime Ministers, Gordon Brown and David Cameron respectively, have been “very proactive, undertaking a once-a-month walk of the site”. A “target of zero accidents” was set and the reality has been “quite close”, Jim states. “Unlike Wembley, there is no other option but to finish it on time, regardless of cost,” he adds.Ironically, Mullingar’s Mr Swimming, Anthony Hughes spotted Jim during our chat and asked about acquiring tickets for the Games in 2012! Far from magically producing wads of passes from his back pocket, Jim explains that “Coe wants the normal working class people of London to be able to buy tickets at face value, on a first-come-first-served basis and a go-on-line policy is the same across the board.”Naturally, nothing would please Jim more than to see a fellow-townsman like Martin Fagan, John Joe Nevin (“I played soccer with a number of his relations”) or John Joe Joyce leaving London with an Olympic medal in 21 months from now: “I envisage a big medal haul for Ireland. The Games are a massive incentive for Irish sportsmen, with no acclimatisation problems and a great Irish community to urge them on.” With all in readiness for the greatest sports extravaganza of them all, Jim is urging “any betting man to put two euro on England to win their bid for the other great sporting showpiece, the World Cup in 2018 - but maybe not to win the tournament itself!”While confessing that he and his wife Carol and their family are unlikely ever to relocate in Ireland, Jim’s heart remains firmly rooted in Westmeath. “This is a transitional time for Westmeath football. I saw Dessie Dolan for Garrycastle on Sunday week and he is still brilliant, but he has lost half a yard in pace. It is over 11 years since I saw him in Limerick when we beat Kerry in the under-21 All-Ireland, and we need young lads now to take over,” Jim reflects. “The irony is that lots of great footballers are heading again to London chasing work. I recall one of my teachers in St. Mary’s, Galway footballer Sean Cleary saying that, in the 1960s, if London had a team in the championship, they could have won Connacht.”Jim remains closely associated with Tara GFC in London and fondly recalls hosting a contingent of Westmeath fans (this columnist included) when London took on the maroon and whites on a couple of occasions over a decade ago, before the Lake County belatedly moved up Gaelic football’s ladder. However, Jim is very keen that the county’s recent slide is firmly halted and that no further Division Four trips are made by the Lake County to Ruislip in the future. But he will welcome with open arms any visitors to his adopted city for the Games of the XXX Olympiad, scheduled to take place in London from 27th July to 12th August, in 2012. There are only 632 days to go!