TV Presenter Brian Ormond rang the IMNDA office in early August because he had decided to organise a Charity Golf Day at Palmerstown House Golf Club, Kildare and he had selected us as the beneficiary… what Brian also wanted to tell us is the event was happening in exactly 3 weeks time!

Cue operation ‘Golf’!

Brian organised this event with Azhar Barri and Ken Murray, Ken lost his father Joe to MND and this was one of the reasons why Brian chose the IMNDA as well as, of course Jimmy Magee’s son Paul.

The 3 main organisers couldn’t have made life easier for us by managing to sign up over 40 teams of 4 to play on the day! They also secured some fantastic raffle prizes for the evening presentations.

Holes were sponsored, donations made and favours given to prepare for Thursday 19th August.

The morning of the event arrived and the sun shone down on all our morning teams as they paid their fee, collected their buggy & bacon roll and spun off in their buggies for their shotgun start – although a trumpet replaced the shotgun on this occasion!

There had been an overwhelmingly amount of teams preferring to play in the afternoon… they may have regretted this as the black clouds moved into place and the rain poured down just in time for their tee off at 2:30pm pretty much continuing as they played all 18 holes! However every team turned up and got on with it in excellent spirits which can be confirmed by our wonderful volunteers out on the 10th hole AKA ‘The hole in one’ who succeeded in getting thousands of euros out of our willing participants in the rain as they all attempted to win a car… but didn’t!

Brian and Jimmy whizzed round in a buggy to meet each team as they played and have photos taken.

Players on the day included, Singer Red Hurley, Comedian Sil Fox, former boxer Bernard Dunne, presenter Rob Ross and Gerald Keane.

Once everybody had dried off, tucked into the barbecue it was time for the presentations. Jimmy & Brian held court and Mickey Harte treated us to a few songs. Sil Fox spontaneously treated us to a few minutes stand up comedy.

An enormous thank you to Brian, Ken, Azhar and Jimmy – all at Palmerstown, everyone who gave sponsorship in particular Tommy Hilger who couldn’t have been more generous in all they did for the event.

When he started the organising, Brian told us he planned to raise €5. So once the bills were paid we were all more than thrilled with the €11.5k… not bad for 3 weeks work!!!