Tandragee 100's Anne Forsythe 'honoured' to receive Federation of Irish Sport Volunteers accolade

Anne has received the 2020 Federation of Irish Sport Volunteers in Sport award for Armagh and will feature in a live virtual ceremony on Thursday evening, which can be accessed on the organisation’s Facebook page, www.facebook.com/federationofirishsport, from 7pm.

Instrumental in running the Tandragee 100, which has sadly been cancelled this year due to the ongoing Covid-19 risk, Anne has been a volunteer since she was 13 years old.

She has also taken on the role of the MCUI’s (Ulster Centre) liaison officer with Sport NI against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has presented organising clubs with unprecedented new challenges.

Anne said: “I’m really delighted and honoured to get this award but I see it as recognition not only for myself, but also for all of the volunteers of the club.

“When you look at the other counties across the country, the awards are for people volunteering in the bigger mainstream sports like football, GAA and athletics for example, so for a sport like ours to be recognised in this way is really lovely.

“It’s not just about me, it’s for all the volunteers involved in our sport.

“Ultimately I volunteer because I feel absolutely duty bound to ensure those competitors who want to go racing can do so as safely as possible, in a relatively controlled environment, and that is what motivates me.”

The Tandragee 100 may not be taking place in May, but Anne – who already has her hands full in her role as the Head of Organisational Development and Learning with the Southern Health and Social Care Trust – will once again be putting in many extra volunteering hours throughout the year ahead.

She explained: “Even though we are not running our event this year, I’m still involved in a significant number of hours’ work, not only for our own club, but for the sport in general.

“I’m involved as the liaison between the governing body and Sport NI and the Department for Communities, so all the way through 2020 and continuing now, I’ve been involved in discussions about what we can and cannot do in the sport in these times of coronavirus.

“This has involved working on what our risk assessments should look like and what our processes should be et cetera, so while it is very disappointing for me personally and our club that our event cannot go ahead this year, there is still a lot of work to be done as a volunteer to support many different aspects of our sport at the moment and that is what I’m focused on,” she added.

“We’ve also got the short circuits and the trials events to think about and sometimes they get overlooked. A number of trials events took place in 2020 and we had a short circuit meeting as well at Kirkistown, so there’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes because those meetings have to be Covid-ready as well.”

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