Cormac Trust Student Game
FORMER students of the late Tyrone GAA star Cormac McAnallen are to play the students of his fiancee in the second annual challenge match in his memory.
Under-14 and under-16 girls’ teams from the GAA club at St Catherine’s College in Armagh – which Cormac founded three years ago – are to play their counterparts from St Brigid’s High School, Claudy.
The Co Derry school’s GAA club was founded last year by Ashlene Moore. The couple had intended to marry at Christmas, before Cormac’s tragic death in March last year.
The Tyrone captain, who just months previously had won a senior All Ireland medal and an All Stars award, died suddenly when a rare viral condition of the heart struck without warning. He was 24.
The charity match is provisionally scheduled for Saturday June 4 at the grounds of St Patrick’s, Eglish, Cormac’s club.
“Any money that we raise will go towards the Cormac Trust,” Ash-lene said, referring to the registered charity, dedicated to providing specialist cardiac equipment including defibrillators at every sports club in Co Tyrone and further afield, which was set up after Cormac’s death.
“It’s about keeping the memory alive. The Cormac Trust is going very well. So far we have raised over £100,000 and the first defibrillator was presented at the weekend to the St Enda’s club in Omagh. Brendan [Cormac’s fath-er] presented it,” she said.
Ashlene said she had founded the club at St Brigid’s within the past year “out of my own interest in Gaelic games and the rise in interest in Gaelic games, and because I was so passionate about it”.
“I trained the St Catherine’s girls for a while when Cormac was still alive, I took them after school. So I know all the girls. I’d say it should be a good match,” she said.
Ashlene also announced that she is to climb Mount Kilimanjaro to help raise funds not only for the Cormac Trust but also for street children in Africa and other parts of the developing world.
Last year she worked for a number of weeks in Calcutta with Mother Theresa’s order, helping to alleviate the extreme poverty of street children.