By Shaun Casey

THE Spirit of Paul McGirr foundation is bringing together some of the biggest names in GAA to help raise much-needed funds for their tireless charity work in a golf classic hosted at the Lough Erne resort on Friday, September 27.

Former Tyrone and Dromore footballer Sean O’Neill, a managing director at MFC, a local sportswear company, have teamed up with the Spirit of Paul McGirr charity to help bring everything together.

Five-time All-Ireland winner Niall Scully along with Kerry midfielder Joe O’Connor are both employed by MFC so they will be in attendance, as will the Clifford brothers, Paudie and David, along with Darragh Roche from the Kingdom.

The new Tyrone manager and current Glen boss Malachy O’Rourke, along with his right-hand man Ryan Porter, will pick up the clubs for the day, as well as Paddy Tally, Ronan McNamee and Peter Canavan.

Representatives of the reigning Paul McGirr U-16 Ulster Club champions Dromintee – set for another visit to the tournament later this year – will also be in attendance as well, along with the Kildare minor team, who won the Paul McGirr All-Ireland title this season.

“We’re obviously delighted to be involved,” said O’Neill, who has been helping to organise the golf classic and recalls admiring Paul McGirr from a young age.

“The concept really came about because the Spirit of Paul McGirr charity and what it does is absolutely outstanding with the tireless effort that has gone into the many years of raising funds to help societies in Zambia, building schools and clinics.”

On Paul McGirr, O’Neill added, “As Dromore people, Fabian (O’Neill) and I, the directors of MFC, we were just young lads whenever Paul McGirr was 16, 17, 18 years old and we looked up to Paul at that age. Clearly, he was one of the main men in the club at that stage.

“I suppose we tried to follow suit, you wanted to be like Paul and now we find ourselves in a position where we feel compelled to get behind what the charity is doing.

“MFC haven’t been involved in many days like this to be honest, we haven’t really engaged with fundraising events in this capacity before but when we decided to do this, The Spirit of Paul McGirr charity was at the forefront of our thinking.

“The amount of people that the charity touches and impacts, the awareness that people now have of it, we wanted to really get behind it and help it in its endeavours.”

Paul McGirr tragically lost his life after sustaining a fatal injury while playing for Tyrone minors against Armagh in the Ulster Championship quarter-final in 1997.

To commemorate his 10th anniversary, friends of Paul and members of his minor team decided to establish the Spirit of Paul McGirr foundation. The McGirr family rowed in behind the idea and helped get it up and running. It has grown from strength to strength.

“Whenever his teammates and the young people of his age got together and decided to do something, the family thought that we’d put a bit of shape on it or some official structure to it and that’s how it got going,” explained Michael McGirr, Paul’s brother.

“We joined up with a local SMA priest (Society of African Missions), Fr Jim O’Kane, who was working in a tough compound in a north inner-city of Lusaka. We saw the obvious need for what he was doing, and we helped him.

“We built a community centre and a special needs school initially. The community centre turned out to be more like a respite centre. People got out of the muck and the clobber and came to this place of concrete, and it put a roof over their heads.

“It was a place where they could meet up and get involved in their community choir groups or community functions and things like that. It was somewhere clean and safe and then there was an obvious need for a special needs school to look after kids.

“We look after those children in the mornings and keep them safe. From then we went on to build a primary school and put a roof on another primary school now we’re building the Tyrone secondary school in Zambia, it should be finished by next Easter.

“It will have cost us the best part of £300,000. The whole campus will be self-sustaining, it’ll fund itself whenever we finish putting the capital in, some people will pay fees and others will get bursaries, but it’ll be self-supporting for 1,000 children.”