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Celebrating a year to remember with a night to remember at the Aodh Ruadh Dinner Dance

Saturday saw the largest crowd in a number of years beating a path to the Aodh Ruadh Annual Dinner Dance in Dorrian's Imperial Hotel, with Sean Perry, once again at the helm for evening.

Proceedings got underway with the presentations to the three-in-a-row 2017 All-Ireland under 21 C Hurling Championship Andrew O'Neill Cup winners. Aodh Ruadh's Eddie Lynch, Ciaran Rami, Oisin Rooney and Conor Kennedy were all members of the panel with Kevin Loughlin the back room team as Donegal defeated Sligo 1-14 to 0-12 in the final.

The evening then moved on to the individual awards section. Young ladies player of the year was Rebecca Gillespie while Anna Rafferty scooped the Ladies player of the year award. The Young hurler of the year went to Aaron Duffy. The first of the football awards went to Karl O'Brien who was named reserve footballer of the year. The Ciaran Keon senior player of the year went to David McGurrin. The Sean Slevin club person of the year caught James O'Donnell well off guard, but it was richly deserved for a great deal of selfless work on behalf of the club above and beyond his senior team management.

Next came two team awards. First up were the men's League Division 2 winners collecting their medal after restoring the club to top flight football in the county for the first time in ten years. Arguably the highlight of the night was the presentation to the guests of honour, our Ulster club minor football championship winning side of 1992.

That was followed by presentations to our representatives on the team of those other immortal heroes of 1992, the All-Ireland senior football champions. Gary Walsh, Niall Murray on behalf of Brian Murray, Sylvester Maguire and Matt Gallagher were all called forward for awards with a special presentation also made to the mastermind of the triumph, Brian McEniff.

With the evening drawing to a close Mick McGrath was presented with a memento to mark his election as only the third Aodh Ruadh club man to take on the highest adiminstrative post in the county, Cathaoirleach Dhún na nGall. Tokens of appreciation were then presented to the outgoing senior hurling managers Aidan Begley and Kevin Loughlin and to out-going county referees' administrator, Shane Toolan.

With the night's ceremonials complete it was time for The Trutones to take the stage and supply the music as Aodh Ruadh continued to mark the year past in appropriate style. We will have pictures and video from the evening's festivities up on aodhruadh.org over the course of the week.

Last modified: Tuesday, 2 June 2020 at 3:59pm