SACA Newsletter

Summer 2014 SCHOOL’S OUT FOR SUMMER!! As the summer holidays approach, we are all hoping that there is some good weather in store for us in Ireland!! Inside this issue of the Alumni Newsletter you can read the latest news from SACA which includes: 

the music of Negative

Equity,



the €500,000 investment for the social marketing start-up PopDeem,

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and “Made It” an initiative to bring together the city’s most talented creatives so they can learn from one another.

Dates For Your Diary Sunday 28th September SACA/PTA Family Fun Day at the College Friday 10th October Annual Dinner Guinness Storehouse Saturday 15th November 10 & 20 Year Reunions Dublin Hilton

Cricket In a week where the St Andrew’s Senior Girls and Boys and the Under 14A boys have won their respective Leinster cricket titles the following is an interesting look back at another cricket legend from St Andrew’s. Below is an excerpt from a recent interview with Irish cricket legend Miriam Grealey (Class of 83) in the online magazine CricketEurope Ireland . A determined captain, batter and bowler for Ireland, Miriam has had a long Irish career that spanned over 18 years. She says her reason for taking up cricket was the encouragement she received from one of her teachers, Caroline Watson, who was herself an International Cricketer who succeeded in getting girls interested in playing. Miriam never liked athletics so cricket offered her an opportunity to try something different. Along the way she set up many batting and bowling records. Miriam held the most capped player accolade for many years, before Clare Shillington took over that honour. With a lot of hard work and fight Miriam set high standards for a lot of Irish women cricketers to follow.          

Full name: Miriam Elizabeth Grealey Born: 27th December 1965, Donegal, Ireland Batting: Right-handed Bowling: Right hand Off Spin Domestic career: 1982-2010 Interprovincial career: 1985-2010 (North Leinster & South Leinster) Irish Career: 18 years (1987-2005) Irish caps: 83 Irish runs: 1412 Irish wickets: 38

Miriam pictured 3rd from the right

Many congratulations to Rachel Wyse (Class of 2003) who has been announced as the new Sky sports presenter for its GAA coverage, along with former rugby player Brian Carney . Rachel was quoted as saying “Over the years I‟ve presented on a number of different shows on Sky Sports but I‟m particularly excited to showcase the talent of GAA players both to those who know the game and to a new audience." Her co host, Brian Carney, is a dual-code rugby player - both League and Union - who was capped four times for Ireland and also played for Munster.

Congratulations to Ben Marshall and the Leinster A rugby team w h o h a d a t r e m e n do us performance against a strong Leeds Carnegie team, and retained the British & Irish Cup recently with a 44-17 victory. Unfortunately Ben was injured in the match and we hope for a speedy recovery for him.

Congratulations to Felix Jones (Class of 2005) on his selection for the Ireland rugby squad to tour Argentina this summer.

London Reunion On Friday 9 May a reunion of UK-based alumni took place in the Marylebone Hotel in London. A small, but very select, gathering was enjoyed by all present! Numbers were up on last year and, now that this event has become firmly set in SACA‟s calendar of events, it is hoped that attendance will continue to grow. The Alumni Office is keen to start a database of UK-based alumni so please let us have your names and email addresses and let‟s try to make next year a bumper-sized reunion! The Alumni Office is grateful to Patrick Myers (Class of 1979) and Daniel Campion (Class of 2006) who are to be thanked for their help with the organisation of this event. The Dairy – Clapham Whilst in London to attend the alumni gathering, SACA Secretary, Sally Walker (Class of 1980) and her brother Andrew Walker (Class of 1987) took a tube out to Clapham Common to visit The Dairy, a restaurant owned and run by past pupil Sarah Murphy (Class of 1999) and her husband Robin Gill. They had read wonderful reviews about this relatively new venture but still weren‟t sure what to expect. As Sally and Andrew‟s other halves were in tow they were hoping it would be good, and good it was! In fact it was great! On arrival, piping hot bread, served in a miniature jute sack, was brought to the table. More had to be requested as it was hastily scoffed (one builds up quite a hunger walking around London)! It was recommended several dishes from the Garden, Land and Sea sections of the menu be shared which they duly did. Sharing was hard as each dish was more delicious than the last and was hard to relinquish for others to sample! Congratulations Sarah and Robin – a great, fun, eating experience – try it out! The Dairy, 15 The Pavement, Clapham Common, London SW4 0HY Tel 020-7622-4165—http://www.the-dairy.co.uk/

London Reunion

L to R: Elaine Pierce, Jane Cuppage,

L to R: Naomi Wilson, Daniel Campion

Fearon Cassidy & Nina Kerkez

& Patrick Myers

Sister and Brother Sally Walker & Andrew Walker

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Launch of SACA Business Lunches

Maureen Van Wijk speaking at the Lunch

L to R : Sally Walker Maureen Van Wijk Linda Laird Andy Crawford

SACA ran its inaugural Business Lunch on 27 May in the Hilton Dublin, Charlemont Bridge. Andy Crawford (SACA President and Class of 1984), Director of Global Consumer Planning with Diageo, Maureen Van Wijk (Managing Director) and Robin McGhee (Planning Director) of Millward Brown spoke about brand building. The event was really well supported by alumni and parents. It was great to see businesses, social entrepreneurs and organisations from diverse backgrounds there. This is the first in a series of lunches we will run with the next taking place in the autumn. We are looking for interesting speakers – please let us know if this is something that would like to take part in.

POPDEEM—WORD-OF-MOUTH 21ST-CENTURY STYLE

The founders of Popdeem—L to R Gavin Hayes, CEO (Class of 2008) Richard Whelan, and Conor Mongey

Every success to Gavin Hayes (Class of 2008) and his company Popdeem who, with his partners, has just received substantial funding. Influencer marketing platform Popdeem has raised €500,000 in funding from Delta Partners, Enterprise Ireland and several leading angel investors. Dublin-based Popdeem‟s technology helps brands drive word-of-mouth and peer-to-peer engagement across social networks. Founded in 2012 as a social rewards app for local businesses, the company is now white-labelling its technology to enable large brands to use its social marketing tools to engage customers online. Brands can integrate the technology into existing mobile apps using the Popdeem mobile software development kit. Popdeem is one of the first start-ups to have accelerated its business in startup accelerator Wayra in 2012/2013. For more see: http://www.siliconrepublic.com/start-ups/item/36971-social-marketing-start-up/

http://madeitseries.com/index.html Founded by classmates Lucy O’Sullivan and Emily Carson (both Class of 2007) and 3 others, ―Made It‖ is a friendly place to meet and learn from people „who've done it before’, bringing together the city‟s most talented creatives so they can learn from one another. It is a series of panel discussions and Q & A‟s. There are so many innovators and entrepreneurs in Dublin and their aim is to help demystify how they brought their projects to fruition. The team want to foster a sense of community between various creative fields in Dublin. They also want to demystify how successful projects were brought to fruition and hope that everyone who comes along gets inspired, excited and maybe goes on to make something of their own. This month's theme was technology, so they were bringing together people who have tried, failed, succeeded and created something worth talking about. Emily Carson is a writer with Totally Dublin and co-presents the Totally Dublin Show on TXFM. Lucy O'Sullivan is a creative mind with an eye on global affairs. She also happens to be a trilingual middle distance runner with an interest in community events. To check out future events go to: http://madeitseries.com/index.html

The Made It team including 2nd from left Emily Carson and 2nd from right Lucy O’Sullivan

What a breakthrough for Negative Equity, a band formed by 4 classmates from the Class of 2013 – Rob Halpin, Chris Curran, Ian Harper and Sam Russell. They write their own music and have just released 8 tracks, 4 of which are instrumentals and were recorded for the purpose of being put in the Aviva Stadium‟s DVD to be played during tours of the stadium, all the music played will be Negative Equity‟s original tracks. To see and hear more go to: https://m.facebook.com/pages/Negative-Equity/133846040020745?refsrc=http% 3A%2F%2Fwww.google.ie%2F&_rdr and Soundcloud: http://m.soundcloud.com/negative-equity

2014 SACA GOLF OUTING More New Names on the Cups!

On a lovely May afternoon, the Past Pupils held their annual golf outing in Edmondstown Golf Club on Friday, 16 May. Similar to last year, as we turned to play the last 7 holes, the good weather meant that we were able to enjoy our mid-round refreshments of strawberries and cream in sunshine outside the clubhouse. The turn-out on the day of 27 golfers was less than last year, reflecting the fact that we were competing for numbers with the very successful and well-attended St Andrew‟s College Fundraiser Golf Classic run by the PTA in Elm Park on the previous Friday. However, the attending alumni represented a wide spread of ages. The younger members showed their long, straight driving ability with Chris Salter (year of 2012) and Karen Tyrrell (year of 1985) winning the Men‟s and Ladies‟ Longest Drive competitions. Chris Salter’s drive on the 18th amazed many of the more experienced members of Edmondstown as he drove way past the gap in the hedge to some 30 yards from the green – next stop the US PGA Tour!!! “Nearest the Pin” was won by a visitor (and parent of alumni David and Ross) Trevor Watkins. Derek McCleane (year of 1956) won the Front Nine with 13 points and Shane Moran (year of 2011) won the Back Nine with 22 points. The winners of the stableford competition were as follows: 1st

Ron McWilliam (year of 1968), 38 points playing off 18

2nd

David Varian (year of 1985), 35 points playing off 5

3rd

Terry Forsyth (year of 1960), 32 points, (on a count-back) playing off 17

4th

Arthur Jordan (year of 1954), 32 points, playing off 17

5th

Cliff Forsyth (year of 1956), 31 points playing off 21

6th

Bernard White (year of 1964) 30 points, playing off 17

The Heney Cup, awarded for the best score by men with handicaps from scratch to 12, was won by David Varian. The Leslie Cup, awarded for the best score by men with handicaps of 13 or more, was won by Ron McWilliam. The Taylor Cup, awarded for the best score by ladies, was won by Karen Tyrell with the runner up being the College‟s Deputy Principal Joan Kirby. Following a very informal and enjoyable meal post-golf, at which the golfers were joined by SACA Secretary Sally Walker and Past President Bob Tweedy, the prizes were presented by Linda Laird, President Elect of St Andrew‟s College Alumni (SACA). We look forward to the various winners returning next year to defend their trophies!

Wedding

Congratulations to Daniel Crean (Class of 1999) and Rachel Kenny who tied the knot recently.

DEATHS

Our sincere sympathy goes to the family, friends and classmates of the following past pupils who died recently: Annika Lyons (Class of 1998) who died in London earlier this month. Dave Elmo Sorensen (Class of 1972) who died in Germany recently. Dick Freeman (Class of 1939) who died peacefully at the age of 93. Dick was a regular attendee at the St Stephen‟s Green and Clyde Road Lunch, having attended the College when it was situated in both locations.