spikes

The current Waterford Athletic Club was not founded until 1923 but the city had a record of athletic achievement stretching back many years. This is an extract from the clubs website. "From its earliest days Waterford Athletic Club had its fair share of famous sports people as an examination of its first officers illustrates. The President was the famed G.A.A. referee Willie Walsh, one of the giants of the early years of that association. The vice President was Peter O'Connor, double Olympic medallist in the 1906 Games where he won gold in the triple jump with 14.08m and silver in the long jump with 7.02m. After his final attempt victory in the triple jump, O'Connor (who had been forced by political considerations to compete for Great Britain) climbed the flagpole, pulled down the Union Jack and replaced it with the green flag of Ireland."

The shed in the background appears in some of Pooles other photos such as this one POOLEIMP 272A It looks to me like it's probably taken in the peoples park by the Goff cycle track. There is a building marked on the old 25" Ordnance Survey map that is no longer there. maps.osi.ie/publicviewer/#V1,661104,611974,7,9

Peter O'Connor mentions the Goff Track in this piece, "The luckiest thing that ever happened to me was to take up residence in Waterford … I had the advantage of training with those excellent athletes … including E. W. Clyne, J. Curry, Frank Furlong and others. I may indeed, gentlemen, attribute the greater portion of my success in the athletic arena to my having come to live in Waterford. For years I have been hovering around record figures but bad luck haunted me. My jumps were always a wee bit short of the mark and, when over the mark as they were on several occasions, the ground failed to stand the test of the spirit level, which is absolutely essential before any credence is given to any jumps. I would have disappeared and chucked athletics altogether, were it not for three reasons, viz., 1st. The kindness of my employer, Mr. David Dunford, Solicitor, in permitting me to attend all the main athletic meetings in the South of Ireland, in a greater part of Leinster and elsewhere. 2nd. I found splendid facilities in Waterford for training - Waterpark College grounds for the long jump and the Goff track for sprinting. This track is the finest track in Ireland for cycling and sprinting. 3rd. I received every encouragement in the flattering and undeserved articles from the pen of my good and true friend, Mr. Redmond, in his excellent paper - the Waterford News." waterfordireland.tripod.com/peter_o'connor.htm

Excellent piece Paul, It shows how the athlete benefitted from good will and good fortune. Well done Waterford.

Swordscookie Paul O'Farrell And lookie here - who's that but Peter O'Connor, Irish Olympic and Waterford athlete...

We've been searching for the name of this girl for a number of years. We'd love someone with a "never say die" approach to take on trying to find out who she is. There's so much more online content available that in 2003 when we featured this photo in our first digitisation project.

Home » Dreaming » Imagination The Pineapple Girl by Francesca Rendle-Short.. Sometime in 1924 in London, a little girl, of no more than five years old, I fancy, sat down in a crate of Queensland pineapples and smiled. Her legs were tucked up under the largest and spikiest of all pineapple specimens, and she held a slice in her hand. The occasion was a Queensland fruit promotion at the Empire Exhibition at Wembley. King George V opened the exhibit, and vast numbers of visitors took part—millions, records say, through the turnstiles. One pineapple girl always leads to another; this original 1924 PictureAustralia girl leads me to all the other pineapple girls I have known and discovered. There’s Kath and Dulcie from Atthow’s pineapple farm at Lindum in Brisbane; the littlest of all Pineapple Girls hiding as ‘a charming study’ in the land of sunshine; ‘country beauty’ Bronwyn Moorehouse posing among the ripe pineapples on her father’s plantation in the Maroochy district on the Sunshine Coast; and Dutch-born Mrs E Buikstra, of Stavoren, Friesland, checking slices of pineapple for faults at the famous Northgate—with a smile. Pineapple Girl takes me back to my own childhood, too, to the smell of my own Queensland through my hair and up the nose, here, tucked into the frangipani corner in St Lucia, in a photograph my father took when I was four or five years old. I fancy pineapple excess on my tongue, the taste of warmth and fecundity: possibility. You can imagine this Pineapple Girl in an agricultural display too, can’t you? She’s got the right smile. A perfect fringe. She takes me back to the sickly stench of pineapple juice stuck in my sister’s hair long after shifts in the cannery, to tales of excoriated skin and the sting of cuts. To disbelief, that the punch my mother offered guests at Christian barbeques on Saturday evenings was the same pineapple juice swept off the cannery concrete floor and ladled into two-gallon tins to sell. So my sister says. Just look at the shape and line this Pineapple Girl makes with her body and skirt, her fancy pineapple crown, and something of a curl across the moon of her countenance. She suggests a way to live—making up story as she goes—ignites our imagination, offers a future. She emits light through the phosphorescence, plants a crowd of flowers in us all, and gives breath a chance. Source: www.qhatlas.com.au/content/pineapple-girl

Forget Skidoo...