Lord Mayor's column: Sport and games have given us so much pleasure of late

The line I most love in Cork’s anthem ‘The Banks’ is the line — ‘Where we sported and played’.

Over the past few weeks there has been much sporting and playing.

The All-Ireland Hurling final held most of our attention. For Cork supporters the result was gut wrenching but, my, what a game of hurling.

Many have taken the view that this might have been the greatest game of hurling ever played. Two evenly matched sides in a game that could have gone either way.

All players on both teams should take great pride in having participated in such a game.

The Fan Zone and Homecoming events at Páirc Uí Chaoimh were spectacular. Fun family events can be enjoyed. We should hold them more often.

I hope that the quality of that support can transfer to the Cork camogie team, who this weekend play in the All- Ireland semi final.

Women’s sport has been giving us a lot to smile over recent years.

I was privileged to be in the crowd as the Ireland’s Women’s national team bested the number two ranked side in the world, France, 3-1.

It was another successful event held at Páirc Uí Chaoimh, which showed itself well up to the task of hosting events of many and varied sports. More than 18,000 people were quite impressed by the skill and commitment of the Irish team.

Women athletes were also to the fore at the 70th holding of the Cork City Sports, including several Irish Olympians soon to test themselves in Paris.

It was another enjoyable, excellently organised, sporting event that we are doing so well in Cork right now.

While high level sports are built around competition and being successful, what is even more important is to encourage as many people, as possible, particularly younger people to participate in sports.

As Lord Mayor I have been really impressed with Cork Sports Partnership and its many programmes that seek to encourage participation. The Sport on the Greens programme encourages not only predominant sports like GAA, soccer and athletics but also sports are less well known such as cricket, giving younger people the ability to try new and different things.

Other great programmes they run include Her Outdoors Week and Couch to 5km.

For children the energy was going off the charts during Let’s Play Cork Day, an event I greatly enjoyed when held on Bell’s Field, just off the top of St Patrick’s Hill.

Along with the now traditional face painting and hair plating, there were jenga blocks and hula hoops. There were snowball fights with rolled up white socks. People-sized snakes and ladders was reinvented into smokestacks and wind turbines.

Winning things is all well and good. Having fun is far more important.