A total of 2,219 registered adult runners and walkers participated in last Saturday’s inaugural Eilish Hurley-Ger Hoey Memorial 10km walk/run. However that figure doesn’t include children. Organisers said that close to 2,500 people took part in the event, which started and finished at the St Joseph’s Doora-Barefield GAA grounds in Gurteen.

Ten Clare Junior Cup ties were decided on Sunday last, despite the inclement weather conditions. There were no major surprises on a day when Avenue A had the biggest winning margin.The eagerly awaited all-parish clash of Connolly Celtic and Kilmaley Fern Celtic fell foul of the weather and it has been refixed for this weekend in Kilmaley. Avenue United A 8 Tulla United B  0Avenue United were never troubled as they scored eight goals when easily accounting for Tulla United B on Sunday.Four goals in each half saw the premier outfit gain an easy victory. A Mikey Mahoney hat-trick inside the opening half hour put Tulla on the backfoot and Bary Nugent had another before the half-time whistle sounded.The third quarter was scoreless but then Scott Hennessy found the target and further goals came from Nicki Twumasai, and Eamonn O’Reilly before Hennessy completed the scoring with his second.Avenue United A: John Healy; Dean D’Auria, Eamonn O’Reilly, Mattie Nugent, David Herlihy, …

KILRUSH Choral Society will be clearing their collective throats just before 8pm each evening this week until St Patrick’s night. The group is presenting Brigadoon, in Kilrush Community School. The musical is their ninth annual production. The presentation features up to 50 people on stage, including tenor Joe Kiely and his young grandson, Joe Junior. The show is produced by Ger Rush, while Catherine Tobin is the musical director. Brigadoon is a romantic, tragic and comedy, featuring men in kilts, bonnie lasses, whiskey and bagpipes. Charlie Killeen plays Tommy Albright, Deirdre Browne is Fiona MacKeith, Kevin Shalloo plays Jeff and Cathy Collins is Meg Brockie. The story revolves around two Americans, Tommy and Jeff, who get lost during the first night of their hunting trip in Scotland. They then stumble upon a village, Brigadoon. They learn that the town appears once every 100 years in order to preserve its peace and special beauty. The citizens go to bed at night …

ON March 20, Newmarket-on-Fergus painter Philip Brennan will unveil his 20th solo show, Clarescapes, at the Temple Gate Hotel in Ennis. The exhibition will be opened by writer and historian Seán Spellissy at 8pm in the Great Hall, where it will be on display until 8pm on Friday, March 22.Featuring over 40 works, Clarescapes marries together Philip’s passion for nature, birds, landscape and his growing enthusiasm for song and music. Most of the paintings are in watercolour but inks and acrylic are also used.In the last year and a half, Philip has taken part in several local group exhibitions, exhibiting at the Sweeney Gallery in Kilkee, the Courthouse Gallery, Ennistymon as well as participating in the 2011 Florence Biennale exhibition in Italy. He started showing paintings in group exhibitions in the late 1970s and had his first solo show in Ennis in 1983. He felt it fitting to return to where it all started, to showcase his 20th solo exhibition. …

The Son of the Man who Saves the World is a two-person exhibition, which goes on display at the Courthouse Gallery Ennistymon on Friday at 8pm. The exhibit features works that playfully engage with notions of authorship, collaboration, derivative work and pizza by Jim Ricks and Andrew Salomone.  Despite having not worked directly together since 2006, both Ricks and Salomone have pursued similar art practices after attending the Burren College of Art Masters programme. They both use equal parts humour, approximation and appropriation to create work and have much in common as artists, making their own highly fallible versions of things.By coincidence, they both applied, separately, to work with the Courthouse Gallery many years ago and, about three years ago, they were contacted to have a two-person show. The duo decided to work in tandem to create the exhibition, each expressing his own practice, yet responding to one another. The title is a translation of the sequel to a Turkish …

SEVEN Stagecoach students from Clare will perform at the National Indoor Arena, Birmingham on Sunday, March 24 in the largest ever performance of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s show, Cats. The part-time theatre school network Stagecoach Theatre Arts celebrates 25 years and to mark the occasion, 3,000 young performers aged from six to18 years from Stagecoach schools will participate in the show.The main cast will comprise 50 specially selected dancers and 500 singers in a grand choir from 13 Stagecoach schools. An additional 2,500 young performers from a further 47 schools throughout the UK, Malta, Germany and Ireland have been allocated a selection of the Cats score to bring their own individual creative dances to life within the vast arena. The seven Clare students will form part of the choir and they will sing Jellicle Songs For Jellicle Cats at the opening, Journey to the Heavyside Layer at the finale and The Addressing of Cats. Participating students are Anthony Severin (6) from …

MOUNSHANNON traditional singer Peneleapaí Chung, who established Singers’ Club Loch Deirge, is administering new music medicine as her recently formed band delivers a fresh sound to the public. Her new venture sees the formation of Peneleapaí’s first band, Good Medicine, which made their debut in November 2012 at the Spirit of Voice festival in Galway. Peneleapaí’s love affair with music is long established and she shared her passion for singing by forming the Singers’ Club Loch Deirge in June 2006. She did so to preserve and cultivate tradition as well as offering a forum for people of all ages and inclinations to gather and sing a song, or share a story. “It felt good and right to have both younger and older generations represented and united in the enjoyment and creation of craic agus ceol,” she said.  Peneleapaí qualified for two years running to the provincial level in the Fleadh Cheoil in the Comhaltas Ceoltóirí na hÉireann adult traditional singing …

The 66th annual Clare Drama Festival kicks off on Thursday night at Scariff Community College, hosting 10 different productions performed by drama groups from across the country. Clare deputy Michael McNamara will officially open the festival, which is one of the oldest in the country, having been founded in 1947. “The passion for drama, which is embedded in the local community has ensured the success of the festival,” said festival chairman, Alan Sparling, explaining the event has developed into a showpiece for amateur drama movement in Ireland. Festival adjudicator is Walker Ewart OBE said this year’s festival includes “a fascinating line-up of theatrical entertainment”. Six of the 10 plays to be performed will be staged for the first time in Scariff. Curtains go up nightly at 8.30pm, with a 8pm curtain call on the final night. The festival opens with the local Sliabh Aughty Drama Group in A Wake in the West by Michael J Ginnelly. The story centres on …