The IBU All-Ireland National Championship, for the Moylan Cup, took place in Malahide Regional Bridge Centre over the weekend of 15/16 April, with a full-house of 40 pairs competing.
The prizewinners were:
- 1st Joan Kenny & Jeannie Fitzgerald;
- 2nd Tom Hanlon & John Carroll;
- 3rd BJ O’Brien & Peter Goodman;
- 4th Pat Quinn & Donal Garvey;
- Session Prizes: 1 Peter Pigot & Derek O’Gorman; 2 Carol-Ann Cummins & John Noonan; 3 Diarmuid Reddan & John Phelan.
The major prizewinners are pictured below receiving their prizes from IBU President Harold Curran.
Moylan Cup Winners 2023
Moylan Cup Runners-Up 2023
Moylan Cup Third Place 2023
You’ll find the full results, session-by-session, here, and the Masterpointed results here. Our thanks to all who accepted the invitation to take part, to Malahide for hosting, and to Tournament Director Eamon Galligan for ensuring everything went off smoothly.
Our CBAI President-Elect, Gordon Lessells, has penned the following brief analysis of the weekend’s competition, from the County Clare perspective. He notes that the Moylan Cup will be returning to the county, courtesy of Jeannie, who is from Ennis (her partner Joan is from County Galway). The cup was presented in 1943 by Dr. Peter Moylan, an Ennis doctor and one of the founders of the Ennis Bridge Club, who was President of the CBAI in the preceding year. Originally it was awarded to the winners of a trials competition. In 1956 the Irish Bridge Union, an all-Ireland confederation, was formed and since 1957 the Moylan Cup has been presented to the winners of the IBU’s All-Ireland Pairs Championship. In 1962 and 1963, the Moylan Cup was won by Gordon Holmes, a Limerick solicitor, and Michael O’Connell from Cork. The Moylan Cup was won eight times between 1974 and 1997 by Eoin MacNeill, who was also playing in this year’s event. This year’s runner-up Tom Hanlon has won the Moylan Cup ten times, the first time in 1990; he also has at least three second-place finishes.
The first female pair to win the Moylan Cup were Ruth Giddings and Barbara Seligman in 1965. Ann Montwill and Aileen O’Keeffe won the Moylan Cup twice in 1975 and 1981. Jeannie and Joan are the first all-female winners since then. Next weekend Jeannie and Joan will be playing on the CBAI Ladies team in the Lady Milne Trophy which takes place in Perth, Scotland. A further Ennis connection among the prizewinners at the weekend was provided by Pat Quinn, who came fourth with Donal Garvey.