Great expectations for Irish

WITH individual and team medals within reach, Ireland’s cross-country team manager, Anne Keenan-Buckley, made no effort to hide her excitement when she introduced some of her athletes at Santry yesterday ahead of Sunday’s SPAR European cross-country championships.

Mary Cullen who missed out on a bronze medal by just two hundredths of a second at last year’s championships in Brussels was not present to enjoy the sunshine at Santry Demesne where Athletics Ireland will host the event for the very first time but the team manager who competed in the event five times in all and won a silver team medal in Edinburgh was clearly optimistic that the Sligo woman will get the medal which was savagely snatched from her grasp by fast finishing Ines Monteiro of Portugal last year.

“The two Portuguese runners who finished second and third last year, (Jessica) Augusto and Monteiro, are back again and both are running extremely well,” she said, “And they will have a strong team to defend that title.