Honours continued to flow to the Stackstown club yesterday when Mark Campbell, who is on scholarship at UCD, was named as one of four new caps in the Ireland team for the men's Home Internationals at Royal Co Down on September 22nd to 24th. His new status came only 24 hours after Stackstown's Padraig Harrington had been chosen in Europe's Ryder Cup side.
Next month's staging of the Home Internationals will see a return to the breathtaking Newcastle links, where they were last staged in 1957. And it is to be hoped that Ireland will fare appreciably better than the defeats by Wales, Scotland and England which was the lot of captain Gerry Owens's team on that occasion.
The team is: Mark Campbell (UCD), Gary Cullen (Beaverstown), Noel Fox (Portmarnock), Paddy Gribben (Warrenpoint), Michael Hoey (Shandon Park), Ken Kearney (Galway), Adrian Morrow (Portmarnock), Andrew McCormick (Scrabo), Garth McGimpsey (Bangor), Ciaran McMonagle (Dunfanaghy), Michael Sinclair (Knock). Non-travelling reserve - Eddie Power (Kilkenny). Nonplaying captain - Mick Craddock (Malahide).
Other new caps joining Campbell in the line-up are Hoey, McMonagle and Sinclair, but Hoey and McMonagle were in the six-member team which competed in the European Amateur Championship at Monticello in late June and early July. Meanwhile, it is interesting to note the departure of Power, Eamonn Brady, John Morris, Johnny Foster and David Jones from the team which beat Scotland, halved with Wales and lost to England at Royal Porthcawl last year.
Campbell is a busy player these days. In late July he captured the South of Ireland Championship at Lahinch and is currently preparing for the defence of the Belgian Youths' Championship which begins tomorrow with strokeplay qualifying. He and Rathmore's Graeme McDowell last year brought victory to Ireland in the Nations Cup, which is based on the strokeplay segment of the Belgian event.
Two months ago at Cork GC, Campbell was runner-up to McDowell in the Irish Youths' Championship. After a third round of 70, the Stackstown player was in a strong challenging position only to card a seven on the last hole in a closing 71.
Performances in Monticello were adequate rather than inspiring, so the selectors have gone, understandably, for strong championship form in finalising their line-up.
McMonagle (Irish Close), Kearney (East of Ireland), Cullen (Irish Amateur Open Strokeplay), Gribben (North of Ireland) and Campbell (South of Ireland) are all current champions.
Hoey, last year's Irish Amateur Open Strokeplay champion, will be flown back for the internationals from Clemson University in South Carolina, where he is on a golf scholarship.
Savouring the delights of Royal Co Down will be a special treat for all of these players, old hands and newcomers alike. Several of them were there earlier this season for the British Amateur which England's Graeme Storm captured on June 5th.
Since then, the Newcastle links has been chosen to stage the British Senior Open for the next three years, which means that Christy O'Connor Jnr will be defending the title there next July.
Irish dominance of the last 1980s and early part of this decade at international level, has slipped somewhat in recent years. The triple crown was achieved for the first time on home soil in 1987 at Lahinch and for the first time away, at Conwy, in 1990, when Harrington's burgeoning talent was commanding attention on both sides of the Irish Sea.
With Gribben, McGimpsey, Fox, Kearney, McCormick and Cullen, skipper Craddock has the backbone of the side which lost narrowly to England (7-8) in pursuit of the title on the final day last year. The objective will be instil the necessary confidence into the newcomers so as to improve on that showing.
