Latest news with #Padraic
The Irish Sun
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Irish Sun
Inside Ronan Maher's life beyond hurling from star-studded family to day job as he captains Tipperary to All-Ireland
RONAN Maher followed in his brother's footsteps on Sunday by captaining Tipperary to a shock All-Ireland title. The Premier routed Cork on the back of one of the most stunning second-half displays in All-Ireland final history where 4 He hoisted Liam MacCarthy for the third time on Sunday 4 One of his ex-Tipp star brothers was there to embrace him at the final whistle 4 The Premier were considerable underdogs with most people beforehand 4 Brendan Maher was their captain the last time they won the crown in 2019 Maher Here, SunSport delves into his life away from the hurling pitch: HOW OLD IS RONAN MAHER? The youngest of the three Maher brothers is very much a veteran of the Tipp panel these days as he's 29. The two-time All-Star will turn 30 on October 9. Six-time All-Star Padraic Read More On GAA Meanwhile eldest brother Brendan Ronan and Padraic line out for Thurles Sarsfields while Brendan is a Borris–Ileigh clubman. WHAT IS RONAN MAHER'S JOB? As mentioned by GAA president Jarlath Burns in his post-match speech, Ronan is a hurley-maker by trade. Burns wittily remarked that Sunday saw him go from hurley-maker to history-maker. Most read in GAA Hurling Regarding how his profession revolves around his biggest passion in his free time, Ronan once explained to He said: 'I've always view it as a hobby for me, I'm happy just to be tipping away. Ronan Maher pays tribute to Dillon Quirke after Tipperary GAA win All-Ireland final "It's a change when I will come off my six days working with the guards. "I can go out to the shed and put on the earphones and kind of have my own space.' As mentioned, he is also a member of In 2019 he and Padraic appeared on Ireland AM where they DOES RONAN MAHER HAVE A GIRLFRIEND? He keeps a low profile on social media with his But in one chat with Tipperary Live he did note that he'd spent Christmas 2022 exploring Australia with his girlfriend. He said at the time: 'That was probably up there with one of the best Christmases now, it was a bit different than unusual. "That probably has been one of the most memorable ones for me."
Irish Daily Mirror
12-07-2025
- Sport
- Irish Daily Mirror
How it felt to play at Croke Park to over 70k and give band scene shot in arm
The routine is so ingrained by now as to be done on auto-pilot. Try and get to Croke Park as early as you can on big matchdays, dump the car somewhere around the North Circular Road, stroll down Jones's Road and in through the media entrance in the Hogan Stand. Your name will be ticked off and an 'event staff' wrist band issued, bag checked and tagged. Take the lift up to Level 7, your match programme is issued by Padraic and Éamonn, find a seat in Row C of the press area and while the time away until throw-in. But, today, bar the fact that you are issued with the same wrist band, it's different. I've played pipes since I was 10 years of age and St Joseph's Pipe Band, Clondalkin, of which I am a member, has been afforded the opportunity to play at the Meath-Galway and Kerry-Armagh All-Ireland football quarter-final double header. My first exposure to playing at a game was as a 12-year-old for the 1994 All-Ireland under-21 hurling final in Tullamore. All was going well until a fracas broke out among the Kilkenny and Galway players during the parade, with some of them piling into the middle of the band. But there are no pre-match parades for quarter-finals, so at least there's no fear of having to meet a shoulder from Rian O'Neill or David Clifford. I played in Croke Park for the 2003 Special Olympics opening ceremony, which was amazing, but it was an enormous event. This time, a more niche element of our musical culture is being given a sizeable platform to itself. It sometimes feels as though the pipe band scene exists in a parallel universe. Not all bands play competitively but next month, for example, we will travel to the World Championships in Glasgow. Some 30,000 will attend. The commitment required to compete at this level is commensurate to that of, say, senior club level in GAA terms, so it's certainly not insignificant. Irish bands, including St Joseph's, have won big in Scotland in the past, but it just doesn't tend to resonate over here. Our pipe major, Tim Farrelly, produced a research paper last year entitled 'The Decline of Bagpiping and Pipe Bands in Post-Colonial Ireland'. He found that in the period from 1907-79, there were 551 known pipe bands in Ireland. Last year, there were just 26 bands registered with the Irish Pipe Band Association, which governs the 26 counties. Pipe bands are rare in Croke Park these days and St Joseph's hadn't played there since the 1940s. So, exposure like this, in front of more than 70,000 in the stadium and some 500,000 watching on television, is an enormous, and badly-needed, promotional opportunity, not just for our band but for the pipe band scene in general. We take a coach from Clondalkin to Croke Park. We've been told we can park behind the Cusack Stand. Rookie error straight away: we try to enter via St Joseph's Avenue, off Clonliffe Road, as I would when attending a press event on that side of the stadium on a weekday morning. But it's blocked off on matchdays. So we have to swing back and enter via St James's Avenue instead - with a Garda escorting us in on his push bike! Once we disembark, we're met by Robert Smith, who essentially makes matchdays tick at Croke Park. He takes us inside the ground and gives a pep talk just beyond the Ali Tunnel on the dos and don'ts. Unlike brass instruments, pipes require much fine-tuning but they make a lot of noise so we have to be careful about where we do this. Can't go near the TV trucks, so it's under the Davin/Hogan Stand corner in the bowels of the stadium that we start. Tom Ryan, the GAA director general, squeezes past us in his car. Then the Kerry team bus snakes along. Jack O'Connor gives us a wave. The players are bemused by the sight of 30-odd people in kilts. All the while, the Meath-Galway game is underway since 1.45pm. We have no idea how it's going. On occasions in the past, I have doubled up on a county final day - play with the band and scamper up and down the steps to the press box. But it's just not feasible in a stadium like Croke Park on a matchday like this. At 2pm there is more tuning, this time by tunnel in the Hogan Stand/Nally Terrace corner, from where we enter the field. Come 2.10pm we're in situ and ready to go on, once the first half comes to an end. And it does with John Maher fisting a point to put Galway one up. So, we march onto the pitch though there is a certain cut of grass on which we can set foot, so our ranks are narrower than would normally be the case. We turn and face the Hogan Stand and are granted a warm reception. Five minutes is all that's required of us. Armagh players come past to get a feel for the pitch as we play. One of them even takes a video of us. We play two quick sets and off we go. There's a bit of time to kill before we play again so some of us get the lift to Level 3 and take our seats at the back of the lower deck of the Hogan. Meath are going well but Galway hit them for two goals to go three up as we have to go back down. More tuning. But by the time the lift hits Level 1, Meath are one up again and they kick on for a momentous victory. Ten minutes before Kerry-Armagh gets underway, we're back on the pitch and must countermarch to face the national flag, ahead of playing Amhrán na bhFiann, at the Hogan Stand tunnel, through which we have to make a speedy exit this time rather than the far corner so as not to delay the throw-in unduly. The Kerry management is pensive alongside us. Jerry Grogan, the voice of Croke Park, appeals to the crowd to respect the anthem until its conclusion before introducing the band. Playing the Soldier's Song backed by a 70,000-strong choir is quite the experience and phones buzz in our sporrans as we shuttle down the tunnel and the ball is thrown in. It's not worth returning to our seats for the first half as we are required to play again at half-time, but we catch some of the action from the Nally/Hogan tunnel by looking up at the big screen on Hill 16. Clifford kicks a nice one off his right. Robert tells us that some of the Ulster delegation in the Ard Comhairle have been in touch already, expressing their delight at a pipe band being back in Croke Park. Back on the pitch at half-time, Aisling O'Reilly gives us a generous introduction as we round off a set with a tune called Ivernia, which was composed by our pipe major, Tim. And that concluded our duties for the day, so back up to Level 3 to take in the second half in comfort as Kerry produce a storming quarter, hitting 0-14 in a 15-minute period, to bury the reigning champions. It's refreshing to be able to walk out the gate once the game is over rather than trudge down for post-match quotes though Jack, to be fair to him, is value for money today as I read later that he has a cut at Kerry's critics within the county. 'Great sound today, lads, well done,' says a Kerry supporter on the way out. The response to a video of the anthem posted on social media is extraordinary, with it registering hundreds of thousands of views. Well-known referee David Gough was the sideline official and so he was right alongside us as we played. 'This was simply sensational,' he posts. Tipperary All-Ireland winner Shane McGrath expresses what appears to be a widespread sentiment in calling for a more regular slot for the band at Croke Park. Maybe they'll have us back some time.
Irish Independent
11-07-2025
- Business
- Irish Independent
Meet the Mayo couple who turned an old post office into a booming coffee shop
Padraic, son of Eugene and grandson of Pake, followed in their footsteps – with one major difference. Instead of handing out letters and parcels, Padraic serves teas, lattés and scones in a post office that has been reimagined by him and his partner, Monika Rutkowska. Padraic and Monika aren't the first people who, at some point during Covid, took time to pause and reflect on life, thought, 'Why not?' and opened a business. Something like this is exactly what Kiltimagh needed. 'A lot of people have said to us, especially older people, that this is their new pub,' Padraic tells the Irish Independent. 'Before, if they wanted to meet up, the only place to go was the pub, even if it was during the day for a coffee. But now they have this, and they really appreciate that. It's nice, especially with me being from Mayo, to give that option to the community.' On Main Street alone, five different buildings have received planning permission for residential (2) and commercial redevelopment (3) since 2019. In early 2023, the town that lost its post office gained a coffee shop when Padraic and Monika opened Postbox Coffee – a name which nods to the little green landmark outside the front door. They started with coffees, teas and pastries before expanding their offering to sandwiches, scrambled eggs and other lunches prepared by their chef, Michal Wesolowski. Where possible, they use locally sourced ingredients from suppliers with their names chalked on a board placed tastefully beneath the big green 'An Post' sign. ADVERTISEMENT Learn more 'Our eggs come from literally behind that building,' says Padraic, pointing across the road in the direction of West-A-Wake Eggs. 'The meat for the sausage rolls from that building there,' says Monika, pointing out the window to Conlon's Butchers. Their clientele is split between locals and passerbys. A typical week goes something like this. 'The first two hours is 90pc takeaways, it's commuters going to work,' says Padraic. 'We have got the same 30 or 40 customers every day. You set your watch for when they are going to come in every day, and you know exactly what they want. Then after, about 10 o'clock, it changes more to a sit-down, people meeting up for coffee and teas and then it moves onto lunchtime. It's a bit of a mix.' In another life, long before becoming business partners, Padraic and Monika became life partners in Spain while they worked for Ryanair. 'Love brought me to Ireland,' smiles Monika, who's originally from Poland. They then moved to Dublin, but never really settled. 'He was always dreaming of coming back home one day to Mayo,' explains Monika. That day came in 2020, when Padraic and Monika decided during lockdown to spend six weeks in Kiltimagh. 'We saw this building for sale,' says Padraic, 'and kind of - I jokingly said it - why don't we buy it and open something in it, that planted the seed I guess.' Both of them worked in bars in their youth, but neither had ever run a business. But having their own coffee shop was still something they always talked about, according to Monika. 'When we were going places in Spain and Ireland or all around the world on your holidays, [I'd say] 'If I had a place like that, I'd do it like that' or 'I love this' or 'I love that' and 'I'd love to do that'. Then we saw this place and was like 'Why don't we do it here?'' So they bought the post office and spent the first year turning the upstairs into their living quarters. The second year was spent on turning the post office into their dream coffee shop. Because they needed change-of-use planning permission, that took quite a bit longer than expected. 'Everything had to go from scratch, new wiring, new plumbing, new fire regulations. It wasn't as easy as just buying it and putting a lick of paint on it and doing it up,' explains Padraic. 'It gave us a lot of time to plan and dream and imagine it and try and think,' adds Monika, pointing to the eye-catching mural of a shadow-cloaked Sliabh Cairn – they call it 'The Mountain' in Kiltimagh. It all adds to the melisma of freshness and familiarity that's built and maintained their customer base over the past 18 months. 'A load of locals have a connection to this place. When they came in for the first time it was such a nostalgia for them being in the post office, which is why we kept the sign.' Few are as connected to the post office as Padraic himself. His grandfather Pake did his rounds on a High Nelly and a Honda 50. His son, Eugene, did the same on four wheels. His son, Padraic – when not working his other day job – has a 30-second-long commute that involves descending a flight of stairs. What did Dad make of what Padraic did to the old post office, we can't help but wonder. 'He was a bit, I would say, nervous about it, maybe, us taking the risk of opening a business in a small town,' says Padraic. 'Once we kind of started the work we showed that we were committed and serious to it, especially once we opened. He is in every second day for a cappuccino himself.'
Irish Independent
03-07-2025
- Business
- Irish Independent
Padraic Devanney retires after 42 years with Dunnes Stores – ‘He gave many a Wexford youngster their first job'
Wexford People Today at 21:00 While it may seem like a lifetime ago now, when the doors were opened at Dunnes Stores in Redmond Square back in 1992 it was Padraic Devanney who was there with a warm smile to welcome customers in. Now 33 years on from that moment, and having clocked up 42 years in total with the Irish supermarket chain, Padraic is looking forward to embracing the next chapter as he retires. He was joined by colleagues, family and friends for a special send-off at The Vine recently and left with all the very best wishes from the Dunnes crew. "Padraic would've given many a youngster their start and their first job,' HR Business Partner with Dunnes Stores Emmet Maloney points out. "He is very well thought of and well respected by managers, staff and customers alike and he'll be sorely missed.' A native of Galway, Padraic settled in Wexford and was eventually promoted to head office, working in various senior operational roles, travelling the length and breadth of the country. The esteem in which he is held was evidenced in the fact that over 30 managers from across the south east travelled to Wexford to attend his retirement party. All wished him the very best as he looks forward to taking it easy with his wife Sharon, doing a little bit of gardening and making the most of his retirement.
