As official supermarket of the IRFU, Aldi’s giving primary schools the chance to win €50,000 to develop their playing facilities and help more kids live a healthy and active lifestyle. Two Primary Schools will win €50,000 each to develop their playing facilities. A primary school in each province will receive €2,500 worth of training equipment for their school, a training session with Paul O’Connell including a new set of school jerseys and Aldi branded water bottles. Every school who enters a fully completed poster will receive an Aldi Play Rugby kit bag, 4 rugby balls, a water bottle holder and 6 water bottles.

As many of you know we have been very busy here at St. Paul’s collecting rugby tokens each time we shopped in Aldi over the past few months. At Assembly for the past few weeks there has been great excitement as the unveiling of our progress of each poster. Each poster hold 300 stickers and we have been very fortunate to have filled eight posters with the help of all our wonderful families in St. Paul’s. Thank you for all your incredible support in this. Thank you to the Active Committee, in particular the 5th Class members who helped in sticking on the stickers for the posters. The closing date in April 11th so now all we have to do is await the news of the winners of these fantastic prizes.

St. Paul’s N.S., Ratoath emerged victorious in the final of the Meath Cumann na mBunscol Mini- 7’s competition after a thrilling and extremely close encounter with Kildalkey N.S. On the day, the twelve winners of the regional competitions competed against each other in four groups. St. Paul’s and Kildalkey met each other in the final, having successfully navigated the group stages and their respective semi-finals.

Kildalkey got off to a dream start scoring 1-1 in the opening minutes. St Paul’s battled back with goals from Seán Twyford and Robert Hayes and there was very little between the sides at half time with Kildalkey just edging the encounter.

The second half was an incredible display of talent with both sides exchanging scores and neither side willing to concede an inch. St. Paul’s went in front early on with some fantastic scores from James Kelly, Seán Twyford and Robert Hayes but were never able to open up a secure lead due to some fine teamwork from Kildalkey. St. Paul’s needed to use all their resources to keep the upper hand and it took some heroic defending from players to try and keep Kildalkey at bay. St. Paul’s Keeper, Devin Lynch, in particular put his body on the line several times to deny Kildalkey a number of excellent chances.

In the dying moments it was all to play for with both teams executing some fine scores. With barely any time left on the clock, it took an excellent long ball from Seán Twyford into the forward line to pick out Robert Hayes in order to see the game out. Hayes was left one on one with the keeper and maintained his composure to confidently slot the ball into the Kildalkey net which sealed the victory by a goal. This is St. Paul’s second time to win this competition.

James Kelly, the captain, led his team into the lobby where the teacher and pupils from 3rd to 6th Class were waiting to greet their Champions. The boys were given a great welcome. Take a look at our photos to see the excitement in St. Paul’s.