Cork City Star Colin Healy Visits Scoil Barra!

Local Ballincollig man and Irish soccer International player paid a surprise visit to Scoil Barra yesterday. There was great excitement when rumour of the player’s presence spread throughout the school. Colin was indeed a man on a mission! His target was to rendezvous with a certain fifth class student. Ms. Murphy’s fifth class had recently run a class awareness campaign, “Save Snail Mail!” As part of their campaign, all students had recently handwritten beautiful letters to their heroes, the people they most admired! Letters were sent ‘snail mail’ far and wide, local and international, to all continents of the world, to sports stars, to film stars, to campaign activists, to former presidents, to authors-you name it, they had it covered! The first to respond was local hero and Cork City star Colin Healy. But Colin was taking no chances as he wanted to hand deliver his response letter to fifth class student Adam Murphy in person! Adam was shocked but the class were delighted to have a soccer star of this calibre in the classroom. Many questions and a few photographs and auto graphs later, Colin left his fans (some newly acquired!) in high spirits! As he was leaving, Colin was thrilled to bump in to one of his former primary school teachers, our very own Mr. Harrington. Old tales from former classroom days filled the air as the two boys recalled great times past. He bumped in to Cork City Fanatical supporter SNA Rose Derham too! It is interesting to note Colin’s strong family and sporting connections with Ballincollig. His Grandfather Paddy Healy played for Ballincollig G.A.A. Club and had the honour of winning All-Ireland Senior Hurling and Football medals with Cork in the 1945 and 1946. So Colin may not only have inspired a budding soccer star but a rising  future G.A.A. star too!  And oh yes, ‘snail mail’ really works!!