JKS Swords Karate Club is the lead JKS Dojo in Ireland, promoting, teaching and supporting the development of JKS Karate in Ireland. In February, we ran the JKS Ireland Open Championships which was attended by over 20 Karate Clubs nationally and boasting over 200 competitors and 400 category entries. A great day was had by all.
Our membership is growing but we are still looking for new members to join us (Children, Young People & Adults). Contact Dermot on 087-8073885 for details on how to join. You can also contact us on Facebook: JKS Swords Karate Club or on Instagram: @jks_swords_karate_club
By Ken Duffy
Would you like to join a National Gold Medal winning team, then why not volunteer with Swords Tidy Towns, we are always on the lookout for new members.
You may have a skill that would be beneficial to our group, Bricklaying, Painting, Carpentry, Mural Artwork, Craft Skills, etc that could contribute to our bid for a second National Gold Medal in 2025.
We always need enthusiastic volunteers to help with Litter Picking, Weeding and Planting, Graffiti Removal, Water Testing etc and help at our Swop Shops. It’s a great way of meeting new people who share a common interest, which is the ongoing improvement of Swords town.
Follow and Friend us on our Facebook, Instagram and X, keep up to date by visiting our Web page. We can be contacted on swordstidytowns@gmail.com or by contacting Ken on 086-6008313.
We kicked off 2025 with lots of new coloured belts following our Winter Grading Examinations. All students are now working on the next steps of their skills development to improve their karate basics and are learning their new Kata which will be needed for the next examination.
We also had our traditional invitational class with our students’ parents. Parents come along and tried karate beside their child and had lots of fun. It gives Parents a great idea of what their children are learning and, in some cases, encourages a Parent to join our club to learn Karate for themselves.
We hosted JKS Ireland Instructor training and Open Squad Training session recently. These proved to be very enjoyable sessions with the next ones planned for February.
We are proud to announce that we are the host club for the JKS Ireland Open Championship 2025 which will be held in February 2025. Planning and organising is underway and their will be a wide range of events to cater for beginners, novices, and more advanced students. The Championship is open to Shotokan clubs nationally and we hare hoping for a good turnout.
We are looking forward to a full and busy schedule for 2025. Along with our regular classes, we will have Competitions, Squad training sessions and visits from Japanese Karate Instructors to help us in our training. We also have the European Karate Championships to look forward to in September 2025
Our membership is growing but we are still looking for new members to join us (Children, Young People & Adults). Contact Dermot on 087-8073885 for details on how to join. You can also contact us on Facebook: JKS Swords Karate Club or on Instagram: @jks_swords_karate_club
Article by Ken Duffy
Feb 2025 - We are now into the second month of 2025 and its all systems go, but to date, 2024 has been Swords Tidy Towns most successful year. We celebrated twenty years as a voluntary group, and we won our first National Tidy Towns Competition Gold Medal.
I would like to take this opportunity on behalf of our Executive Committee to extend a big thank you to all our wonderful hard-working volunteers over the past twenty years who contributed, we would not have got here without you.
We would also like to thank Fingal County Council for their unwavering support on our journey to the gold medal and our locally elected representatives.
The support we receive from large and small local business both financially and with feet on the ground helping with projects, is as always, very much appreciated.
The many weekly messages of encouragement we receive from our 4000 Facebook followers is a great boost to our dedicated volunteers and much appreciated by them, keep them coming.
The members of Swords Tidy Towns would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a Very Happy Belated New Year.
This picture was taken at the the annual get together of Swords Meals on Wheels volunteers in the Atrium of the FCC offices in Swords, who were joined by most of the local councillors (Dean Mulligan, Darragh Butler, Darren Jack Kelly, Joe Newman and John Smyth)were in attendance along with local TD Ann Graves…. We also had the Deputy Lord Mayor Cllr. JK Onwumereh who gave a very inspiring speech in support of the work of Swords Meals on Wheels.
Swords Meals on Wheels were out every day over Christmas and have delivered in excess of 25,000 meals over the past year all over the greater Swords area, they are currently delivering in excess of 100 meals daily… a special thanks to Councillor Joe Newman for all his work in helping to organise and support for this event.
By Mike Power
At this time of year, we often take a nostalgic look back on how things panned out for us and for our families, in the year gone past. We’re certainly older but are we any wiser? Looking at how some former residents of Swords lived their lives before us here, might provide some clues as to what the future holds for us.
Whenever someone sinks a spade into Swords, they often uncover dead remains! This happened in 2010 when archaeologists digging where Butlers stands in the Pavillions today, found 68 ancient bodies at a place called Mt Gamble. These folk lived in Swords from 600 - 1,000 ad and were pagan and Christian people buried together. Some of these men suffered a violent death having been hacked to death with swords, many of the women prematurely aged with arthritis. The Swords of that day was violent, and unpredictable, a population tiny compared with today, of maybe of 50/60.
All these people had dental decay, many having actual abscesses. Imagine living your life every day with constant, unremitting toothache- no dentists for them! These folk had grindingly hard lives, their children inadequate food and suffered premature death as a result. To them, our lives today in Swords would be like living in paradise. Life-Lesson? Appreciate your life.
Later, in medieval times, most people in Swords lived on allotments called ‘burgages’. These radiated off main street on both sides. The houses we see here today stand on exactly the same sites as these old medieval wooden, thatched houses did. What a continuity of over 1000 years of history in our village!
These tenants paid one shilling rent to the authorities, and were also expected to carry swords, bows and spears to defend our town when danger came. The whole area of the East side of main street from the Arches up to the Malahide Road was laid out in 122 of these plots. Forster road runs right over these ancient gardens. These settlers were the first freemen/women of Swords and would have been mainly of English stock. Our village then would have been enclosed by defensive walls, the main gate of which stood right where the Malahide and Dublin roads join today outside of Weatherspoon’s. Life Lesson? An investment in land always pays off!
Our final bit of nostalgia concerns the medieval abbey which was destroyed to build the current St Columba’s church by Francis Johnson in 1811. Only the tower of this gothic church remains to be seen today. The noted historian John D’Alton visiting Swords in 1838 commented on the fine towers and walls which surrounded this important church, one of the finest Irish gothic abbeys of that day. Like much of ancient Swords, we need imagination to conjure up just what an important and historic place both ecclesiastically and politically, our little village was in times past.
Life Lesson? Love the place you grew up in and stand by the kids you played with then.
This makes the child , which makes the man , which in turn , makes the family. Is anything more important…?
Wishing you and your family a prosperous, happy and flourishing 2025 !
2024 will go down as one of the best years the club has had since COVID.
Along with our regular weekly schedule of classes, we also found time to fit in monthly Squad training sessions to prepare members of JKS Ireland for the World Karate Championships which were held in Japan in July 2024. Along with this we also crammed in multiple fund-raising activities to help fund the cost of travelling to the World Championships.
We had a total of five members selected as part of the twenty strong Irish team trained and guided by Dermot Sensei 7th Dan JKS for these World Championships and it was a fantastic experience for everyone who travelled.
We hosted several JKS Ireland National Training events with visiting JKS Japan Instructors. We had a visit from Toyama Sensei in January. We had our annual seminar with World Chief Instructor Kagawa Shihan 9th Dan JKS in May and in October Yamaguchi Sensei visited at the beginning of the month, with Watanabe Sensei visiting at the end. All these Japanese Instructors delivered exciting and dynamic sessions, inspiring attendees to develop their Karate Skills further.
We participated in several competitions during the year, Piltown Open Championships, The Kanazawa Cup, the ONAKAI National Kata Championships and the Murakami Open Sheild. We had a mixture of participants at each event, some novices, and some more experienced competitors. We did well at each bringing home medals and competition experience to the club.
We held two club gradings, in early July and mid-December, where club members showed off what they have been studying during the year and all members who took the grading examinations progressed to their next coloured belt.
2025 promises to be another exciting year for the club as we prepare to take part in the European Karate Championships in Denmark in September. We will have our usual schedule of classes plus additional Squad training sessions, and we will have more visits from Japanese Instructors to help us in our training.
Our membership is growing but we are still looking for new members (Children, Young People & Adults). Contact Dermot on 087-8073885 for details on how to join. You can also contact us on Facebook: JKS Swords Karate Club or on Instagram: @jks_swords_karate_club
Congratulations to Brian O’Connell from Swords who was recently named as the winner of the Industry and Community Partnership Award for Maker of the Year, sponsored by Thomas Finn & Co. Sheffield. Brian graduated from Atlantic Technology University BSc in Furniture Design and Manufacture in Letterfrack, Connemara. He is now running his own company called Top Dog Tables.
We had some interesting events recently in the Club. We hosted Japanese Instructor Daisuke Watanabe Sensei from the JKS Headquarters for a Kumite Seminar recently. We had a fantastic session training with him. He has a totally different level of kumite with unbelievable speed and power. His Kumite never fails to disappoint, and we were all inspired by his teaching and kumite expertise.
Students from the club travelled to Tallaght to participate in the SKIF Ireland Murakami Shield Open Championships. This was a National competition with karate clubs from all over Ireland in attendance.
We had some novices who were taking part in their first competition and although they did not win any medals, they gained valuable competition experience on the mats and made the club proud with their participation.
Our more experienced students did take home some medals on the day. Sandra Iliasz took a bronze medal in her kata event while Tom Horgan and Tommy Keegan took bronze medals in their kumite events. Harrison Beaumont did the double, taking bronze in both his kata and kumite categories while Sophia Guildea, hot on the heels of her recent ONAKAI National Kata Champion win, took silver in both her kata and kumite events. Amelia Miller and Lilia Beaumont just missed out on the medal rounds in very tough kata and kumite categories. All in all, however, the results were very good for the club at this event.
We focus now on preparing for our end of term Belt Grading examinations where hopefully all members will progress to a new coloured karate belt and level. After this we wind down for the Christmas break. We would like to thank all our students, families, friends and community for supporting us throughout the year and wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous 2025.
Our Club is always looking for new members (Children, Young People & Adults). Contact Dermot on 087-8073885 for details on how to join our club. You can also contact us on Facebook: JKS Swords Karate Club or on Instagram: @jks_swords_karate_club
Sword’s BC boxer, Shay O’ Dowd, recently competed at the International Boxing Association’s (IBA) World Youth Championships in Budva, Montenegro, returning home with a much-coveted bronze medal. The World Youth Championships pits the best 17/18-year-old talent from around the globe against each other and is attended by all the world’s top boxing federations.
O’Dowd a three – time Irish champion and seventeen years old, was drawn in the last sixteen of the championship against a tough Puerto Rican southpaw. O’Dowd started fast, stunning his opponent early, giving him two standing eight counts before the referee waved the fight off. Next O’Dowd faced an experienced Georgian slugger who was also a European medallist. The fight was an all-action affair and declared by the Irish online boxing media as fight of the tournament with both boxers sharing multiple standing eight counts and the Swords star sustaining a hand injury in the second round and falling behind on the score cards. O’Dowd came out swinging in the final round, stopping his opponent with a superb display of technical boxing and bravery to the delight of the Irish support and Irish boxing fraternity watching at home. Unfortunately, O’Dowd was declared unfit to box by the tournament doctors due to his hand injury so had to withdraw from the tournament and settle for a valued bronze medal.
Swords BC head coach David Byrne spoke about his boxer’s achievement “A world medal is massive for our club. Shay has blasted his way into Irish boxing history and proven himself as a world class athlete and I’m sure he will go all the way to the top in the sport”.
Next up for O’Dowd is the National Under 18 in January which is also a qualification for the European championships.
