Children in need find new champion in Cathal

Cathal Pendred was 11 when his younger brother Padraig was knocked down and broke his femur. As broken bones go that was up there with the worst of them. Two months in traction in a bed at Temple Street Children’s Hospital — and during the summer holidays too.

The boys were close. Every day big bro would make the trip from the family home in the Dublin suburbs to the hospital and, hard and all as it was for Padraig, who would make a full recovery after another two months with his leg in a plaster up to his hip, they both saw just how tough some kids really had it.

“It was a pretty serious injury at the time,” Pendred explains during a break from training at the Straight Blast Gym on Dublin’s Naas Road. “But it’s not as sad a case as most people. There were terminally ill children there and, even at that young age, it was something that struck me. I said that when I was in a position to help out that cause I would.”