Where it began – Webmaster’s story

Well, I thought I better explain how I got infected with the terrible motorsport disease. It doesn’t help that I grew up in a “motorsport house”. The grandfather was a founder of the Kingdom Motor Club (now defunct) and the father was a founder of the Kerry Motor Club (still going strong). With a background like that, it was natural that I’d be stuck in this lark.

The father never competed in rallying. His love was night navigation trials. There’s a story that he competed on his first event at 12 years old as a second navigator in a car. His father (my grandfather) wanted to compete but had nobody to mind the father for the night. So, he was put into the back of the car and the organisers were told that “his mother is out playing bingo so there’s nobody to mind him”. Naturally, as the event kicked off, a second map was passed back and the car had one driver, two navigators…….

With stories like that (oh he pulled terrible stunts as a COC), it was natural that I went to the West Cork & Cork 20 every year growing up. The rumour goes that as a baby, I fell asleep when Demi Fitz passed in the HSR Chevette (I still find them boring!). When I was in college, I joined Cork Motor Club. Being a broke student, I couldn’t afford to compete so helped out organising, marshalling, etc. There I met some like minded people all infected with the same disease, motorsport.

Continue on a few years, college finished and I joined the workforce. Then life came along (bills, mortgage, life, etc) and I decided to be a bit sensible and do a few small events, to break myself in, so to speak. First on the list was night navigation (much to my father’s pleasure, his favourite events). The brother was (un)willingly recruited as a navigator and we embarked using a Citroen AX GT (Still miss that car). We competed, normally cropping up at the bottom of the timesheets and enjoying ourselves. Oh there are stories, the brother figured out that one event timings was completely out for the second half (before the organisers figures it out) and he abandoned the event. How many other events can you be classified as a finisher when you are back in bed? On another event, the brother got peckish so navigated into Dunmanway to get some chips and burgers. The brother had a thing about getting food in the middle of events. On a retrospective trial, he fecked off to get buns and brought back none for the rest of us……..

Over the years, the love of motorsport has ebbed and flowed. Currently, I’d hardly cross the road to go to a tarmac rally but still go to the smaller events. I’ve not competed in a “few” years as I’d rather feck off to Europe for a few weeks exploring in a motorhome…….