Successful 2018 European Cup for the IFSC Force Team

The best result in the history of our club to date!

One Gold, one Silver & two Bronzes medals in +18 sparring. Our tiny group of four competitors managed to reach 8th place in the Senior Medal classification among 62 European clubs and National Teams!

Our club sent a small but mighty team to the recent ITF European Cup in Sibiu, Romania. The European Cup is a unique competition in that it is a Europe wide club competition open to all ITF clubs in Europe and consisted of patterns, sparring and team events. We had four club members on our team and we were delighted to be joined by two World class sparring competitors from Cork so we could enter a team in male black belt team sparring group.

We flew to Romania on Thursday afternoon arriving at 2am Romanian time which made for a short night's sleep before we made our way to the arena Friday to weigh in and sample the atmosphere of the arena as the Children's Competition was run on Friday. We all weighed in good except Cathy who was underweight for her division and had one hour to put on 1 kg. After drinking her way through 2 litres of water she made her weight second time around.

The competition was very well organised and attended by over 900 competitors from 27 countries. The standard was very high through all divisions, especially the black belt categories attracting high quality famous international competitors. It was also great to meet again our friends from the Czech National Union, led by Mr. Stein and Mr. Kolofik, with whom we’ve been training over last three Springs in Prague

On Saturday all our competitors were competing in patterns with good solid performances all round by all but no luck in the medals. It was fantastic to see so many talented martial artists performing up close such as Lylian Doulay from France in 4th Degree Patterns, and many talented up and coming martial artists with big futures ahead of them.

Saturday afternoon we had two of our ladies sparring. Cathy and Shirley in the 18+ blue/red +62kg category. Shirley won her semi-final in a very close fight with scores changing many times but Shirley fought to the last moment and managed to get ahead in the last seconds to earn her place in the final.

In the other semi -final Cathy faced a tall, leggy Cypriot who got the better start scoring with some nice kicks but Cathy started to get the upper hand in the second round getting forward with some strong punching combinations, unfortunately the Cypriot had done enough to get the win. In the final Shirley moved around smartly and fought bravely but the Cypriot scored enough to take the victory. Day 1 and we had a bronze and silver medal earned!

On Sunday we had Deirdre and John sparring. First up was John who had a tough -85 kg black belt sparring division with some top quality and big fighters in the group. With some excellent coaching on the day from Jonny Duggan, and ‘Ireland, Ireland’ cheering by our Czech friends, John got off a to a great start in his first fight against Poland dominating the fight from start to finish, scoring with headshots, side kicks and punches taking all 4 flags from umpires to win 4 - 0.

His second fight was an even more measured performance controlling the pace of the fight and leading from start to finish again taking all 4 flags. This put him in a semi-final against Ukraine, instructed from side lines by the legendary Katya Solovey. The first round was even with a couple of nice exchanges but little scores from either fighter. The second round was also very close with the Ukrainian claiming the victory by the slimmest of margins in a very close decision. He went on to win his final easily with a dominant performance.

Deirdre was next up and started against a skilled and determined Belarusian but Deirdre's intensity was too much and Deirdre progressed to the final against a very strong Polish girl who beat a talented Ukrainian in her semis. Again Deirdre dominated from the start winning every round, scoring some spectacular head shots and precise punches, and gaining her first international Gold medal.

The last event was the team sparring where we fielded a 3 man team in what should be a 5 man event. Our team of John Moffitt, Greg Sheehan and Jonny Duggan all rose to the occasion beating a Polish team in quarters. In our next round we lost narrowly to Romania starting with 2 losses as we were a 3 man team against 5. Special mention must be given to Greg Sheehan who won all his team fights 4-0 fighting excellently and showing a wide range of skills.

This concluded a fantastic weekend for our club bringing back 4 international medals to the club and finishing as 8th on overall club senior medal classifications out of 62 clubs and National Teams from all over Europe. A great achievement we are very proud of.