Conor McCullough - US Hammer Thrower

thirtyfoot

http://www.iaaf.org/WYC07/news/Kind=2/newsId=39493.html

This guy is son of Conor McCullough, our top hammer thrower from the 80's. It'll be interesting to see how he gets on at the World Youths. Was going to say we could try and coax him to switch allegiance but then again he'd have nowhere to throw the hammer over here!

Rineanna

Was just reading that too this morning, didn't know he had Irish blood in him though :eek:

We should defo try to get him to do an Allistair Cragg and join us!!;)

ss43

Rineanna wrote:

Was just reading that too this morning, didn't know he had Irish blood in him though :eek:

We should defo try to get him to do an Allistair Cragg and join us!!;)

Yeah definitely. It reflects so well on Irish athletics when foreigners compete for us and highlight the fact that we can produce very few elite athletes for ourselves. Wonderful. Maybe we should do a Qatar on it and buy in some Kenyans. We could see if we could have a team with no Irish born people or Irish residents on it. Wouldn't that be great?

thirtyfoot

This old chestnut again.

We nearly got Dan O' Brien a few years ago when he failed at the US trials. Not sure if anything would have come of it but O' Brien was definitely looking into at the time and Eamonn Coghlan was involved too as far as I remember.

I've no problem with 'foreigners' coming in, they aren't really taking other athletes places (how many times have we had 4 'A' qualifiers). I used to compete in an event where a 3 or 4 of us were at a certain level and competing for the Irish spot. A 'foreigner' came in and was miles ahead of us. Guys started lifting their game and huge chunks were being taken off PB's.

Cragg has got a slagging here before. I don't think his commitment or Irishness can be questioned, anyone who saw him after the Euros last year will know that. He is proud of his Irishness and I imagine would do a Jamie Carragher if you had to b*lls to say it to his face. Probably will be at the Nationals so you could say it to him then.

By the way, young Quirke in the shot could be one to watch.

Dodge

can't believe anyone would compare the McCullough situation to the Qatari thing.

No problem with Cragg, or this lad if he feels he's Irish.

On the dan O'Brien thing, AFAIK Nike were involved in trying to get him an Irish passport as he was to feature heavily in their Olympic promos.

Rineanna

Oh I wasn't for a minute doubting Cragg's right to run for Ireland. He had an Irish grand-parent, didn't he? And this McCullough can go one step further and say his father is Irish so there's no problem there.

I don't think that would necessarily reflect too badly on Irish athletics. There are many other countries which have much bigger populations (and thus much larger pools to draw athletes from) then us and still have a large international influence on their athletics squads.

If you look at a lot of countries like the UK and Spain, their national squads aren't exactly pure British or Spanish athletes. They are all heavily influenced by athletes who originate from other countries (Germaine Mason and Josephine Onyia for example). Plus they have the advantage of athletes originating from former colonies that have moved to the respective colonial powers in the past. They're perfectly within their rights to do this, but my point is both of these nations have in excess of 40 million in population in the first place, so with us having just 4.2m I think we have a right to also look for Irish blooded athletes abroad.


The part I find a bit ridiculous, and would certainly reflect badly on a national athletics association, is this whole Qatari and Bahrani situation of 'buying' in athletes. I was just watching the Lausanne Grand Prix (btw good time by Derval, 12.98) and I just had to laugh as the commentator spoke about this 'Bahrani' athlete who used to be Kenyan/Ethiopian and clearly had no Bahrani blood in her.

I don't think the two situations are directly comparable because at least there's directly traceable Irish ancestry in them.

It's just situations like the one with Josephine Onyia and Spain that kinda irritate me. She's Nigerian through and through, and has run for Nigeria all her life. But now she gets her release papers and, hey presto, Spain have another world class hurdler! Well I suppose Glorie Alozie is knocking on a bit...

We could see if we could have a team with no Irish born people or Irish residents on it. Wouldn't that be great?

Yes, because that's exactly what I was suggesting.:rolleyes:

thirtyfoot

Rineanna wrote:

Oh I wasn't for a minute doubting Cragg's right to run for Ireland. He had an Irish grand-parent, didn't he?

It wasn't you, its was SS43. Not sure if its his grandparents but I think he has had an Irish passport all his life.

http://www.ireland.com/sports/olympics2004/features/cragg.htm

ss43

Rineanna wrote:

Oh I wasn't for a minute doubting Cragg's right to run for Ireland. He had an Irish grand-parent, didn't he? And this McCullough can go one step further and say his father is Irish so there's no problem there.

I don't think that would necessarily reflect too badly on Irish athletics. There are many other countries which have much bigger populations (and thus much larger pools to draw athletes from) then us and still have a large international influence on their athletics squads.

If you look at a lot of countries like the UK and Spain, their national squads aren't exactly pure British or Spanish athletes. They are all heavily influenced by athletes who originate from other countries (Germaine Mason and Josephine Onyia for example). Plus they have the advantage of athletes originating from former colonies that have moved to the respective colonial powers in the past. They're perfectly within their rights to do this, but my point is both of these nations have in excess of 40 million in population in the first place, so with us having just 4.2m I think we have a right to also look for Irish blooded athletes abroad.


The part I find a bit ridiculous, and would certainly reflect badly on a national athletics association, is this whole Qatari and Bahrani situation of 'buying' in athletes. I was just watching the Lausanne Grand Prix (btw good time by Derval, 12.98) and I just had to laugh as the commentator spoke about this 'Bahrani' athlete who used to be Kenyan/Ethiopian and clearly had no Bahrani blood in her.

I don't think the two situations are directly comparable because at least there's directly traceable Irish ancestry in them.

It's just situations like the one with Josephine Onyia and Spain that kinda irritate me. She's Nigerian through and through, and has run for Nigeria all her life. But now she gets her release papers and, hey presto, Spain have another world class hurdler! Well I suppose Glorie Alozie is knocking on a bit...


Yes, because that's exactly what I was suggesting.:rolleyes:

Half of Cragg's grandparents and parents are women. Should he be allowed compete in the women's races if he feels like it? Think of the medals and records he'd get then!

I think it reflects badly oin the likes of britain and Spain if the athletes representing them aren't british or Spanish. I'm not alone in thinking that way. Same story with use, there's plenty of people against Ireland doing it.

The idea that we have a right to look for Irish athletes abroad becuase we have a smaller population is silly. There are pros and cons to having a small population and you have to work with them. Otherwise there would be no point in recognising what country athletes were from - you'd just divide them up according to ability and try make a certain amouint of similar standard teams.

The comparison with Qatar was that that would be the next step. While not being exactly the same, the two are comparable. In both situations you have athletes competing for countries that aren't their home, competing in competitions that they shouldn't be eligible for (Asian/European Championships), and people losing out on medals and places in finals etc. that they deserved.

Onyia ran for Nigeria all her life, like Cragg did for South Africa before he stopped because they wanted him to run races that didn't suit him. As soon as she competes once for Spain she won't have ran all her life for Nigeria, will she?

Cragg's Irishness can definitely be questioned; here goes: If he is Irish how come he has NEVER lived in Ireland? How come his first trip to Ireland was to represent another country (South Africa)? Most (if not all) subsequent trips have been out of obligation as he had to compete at the national championships to get his place at Europeans/Worlds/Olympics.

thirtyfoot

I'm hearing you ss43. As pure Irish as possible. Several boxes will need to be ticked:

-Red Hair
-Freckles
-Milk bottle white legs
-Travel to training on a donkey (I'm thinking that old postcard image with sister on your side)
-Train in a bog
-Never left the country (first trip will be to the Olympics)
-Recovery and restoration includes downing 5 raw eggs followed by a night dancing at the crossroads with some comely maidens
-Could be harsh but maybe have to be a fluent Irish speaker who can play fiddle, bodhran, tin whistle.
-And the final would be to have caught and tasted the salmon of knowledge itself.

This would work, would weed out any unwanted outsiders.

Clum

Cragg's qualification as an Irish man is a little bit more extended than the 'grandparent rule' the FAI used under Jack Charlton. I think it was his mother's great grandparents who were Irish but it was a South African inititive many years ago that allowed South African parents give their children a passport of their own grandparents nationality (if you get my drift).

I don't mind it though. He carried an Irish passport all his life and was never paid to change his nationality to Irish. This is totally different to what happened in Qatar, etc.

There are various reasons for people changing the country they represent, one is qualifying through parents / grand parents, another is country of residence, etc. (look at Sonia and competing for Australia, or Lornah Kiplagat and The Netherlands, Bernard Lagat and USA....). So long as an athlete satisfies the IAAF rules about country of residence, etc, I can't see why there should be any complaints.

Rineanna

Of course it's not an ideal situation, and, for sure, you can spend your day fantacising about an athletics world where an irish (or insert any other nation) team was made up solely of Irish athletes. But coming back to reality, that's not how it's working out in modern athletes and it doesn't look like it's going to change any time soon. Of course I don't like the fact that nations are not competeing with home grown athletes, but you can hardly say that this is an occurence which comes about regularly in Irish athletics (soccer maybe, but not athletics) when compared to other nations. As far as I can remember, Cragg is the only example of an Irish athlete in recent times not being born here.

Half of Cragg's grandparents and parents are women. Should he be allowed compete in the women's races if he feels like it? Think of the medals and records he'd get then!

Give yourself a pat on the back for yet another sterling contribution to the thread. I have no problem debating a topic but there really is no need to be so crass.

Dodge

Rineanna wrote:

As far as I can remember, Cragg is the only example of an Irish athlete in recent times not being born here.

Brendan and Sarah Reilly too.

But once again, for the record I had no problem with any of these (and Reilly had represented GB at senior level for years)

ss43

Tingle wrote:

I'm hearing you ss43. As pure Irish as possible. Several boxes will need to be ticked:

-Red Hair
-Freckles
-Milk bottle white legs
-Travel to training on a donkey (I'm thinking that old postcard image with sister on your side)
-Train in a bog
-Never left the country (first trip will be to the Olympics)
-Recovery and restoration includes downing 5 raw eggs followed by a night dancing at the crossroads with some comely maidens
-Could be harsh but maybe have to be a fluent Irish speaker who can play fiddle, bodhran, tin whistle.
-And the final would be to have caught and tasted the salmon of knowledge itself.

This would work, would weed out any unwanted outsiders.

Didn't say anything about as pure Irish as possible. Surely though, if you felt that you belonged to some place you'd have managed to spend some time living there by the time you were 26/27 years of age, rather than just coming over when your sport required.

I can understand the grey areas where somone is born and raised in different countries or when they change residence e.g. Azmera Gebrezghi or Jolene Byrne. They live in Ireland. If you were to go by the change of residence logic shouldn't Cragg run for the USA especially given that in the article posted here, it says Fayettville is his home?

Having an Irish passport doesn't cut it given that it's possible to hold more than one - he probably had a South african passport as well.

He might not have been paid to change but the article posted and others I have read definitely suggest that the reason he changed was athletics.

When it happens that some foreigner decides to run for us (as in the case of Cragg) there mightn't be a whole lot we can do about it but the idea of encouraging people to become Irish is ridiculous. It's that idea which meant you had a team made predominantly of foreigners playing soccer for the country.

thirtyfoot

Back to what really matters. McCullough threw 75.98 in the qualifiers and looks like a good bet for a gold in the final