Farewell to the Roscrea French exchange students and all the latest from Coláiste Phobal

Student Council Update
The Coláiste Student Council have launched an initiative to breath life back into the school library and encourage its use as a social space. Their first fund raising initiative was a well supported non-uniform day. Students and staff were very generous and over €700 was raised towards the library rejuvenation fund.

A student survey as to how we can best improve our library will be undertaken in the coming weeks. A visit to an established school library in Thomond College, Limerick will also be undertaken shortly. The Student Council members are seeking as much community support as possible and will be contacting local business to enlist their support.

School Variety Concert
On Thursday March 14th we threw open the doors of our school and welcomed the wider community in to see our studnets perform a wide variety of song and musical performances. Our students worked hard for several weeks in the buildup to Thursday’s show and the quality of their performances were incredible.
We are incredibly privileged to have such a talented and hard-working cohort in our school. A special word of thanks to Mr Maher for coordinating and all the teachers and staff that gave so willingly of their time to ensure that the variety concert was such a success.

Fond Farewells
This week we say a fond farewell to our lovely French Exchange students who spent the last few weeks with us here in Coláiste. L'échange scolaire entre la France et l'Irlande

Senior Footballers advance to County Final
On the 11th of March our Senior Gaelic football team faced Comeragh College in the county semi-final. We had a quick start to the game with Miko Pasalic scoring a well taken goal with the opening attack. This was closely followed by some good points from Tadhg Whyte and James Sampson.

Another goal, late in the first half, scored by Seamie Cleare. The concession of several fouls in quick succession allowed Comeragh back into the game, with Waterford minor footballer, Tom Lynch, converting the resulting frees. The closing moments of the first half saw us reduced to 14 men temporarily due to a black card, but despite this we held on to a somewhat comfortable position of 2-5 to 0-6 at half time.

The second half began with Tadhg Whyte converting two early frees and Daithi Mulvey also getting himself onto the scoreboard following a sweeping move up the field. Luke Tooher hit the back of the net to get CPR’s third goal of the game following a great save by the Comeragh goalkeeper.

Darragh Phelan rounded out the goal scoring when he converted after a fine individual run by Tadhg Whyte. The final score was 4-10 to 1-12.

We will now move on to a county final with the opponents coming from the winners of Presentation Ballingarry Vs Carrick CBS.
There were several impressive performances throughout the team, with Cillian Walsh, Gearoid Maher and Conor Hoctor doing significant defensive work that set the platform for our forwards to score freely. It was also great to see several players, many of whom do not have a football club, performing so well.

Congratulations to Dr Joe Thomson
Huge congratulations to former student Dr Joe Thompson who was deservedly honoured as ETB alumni at a ceremony to mark ETB Day on Thursday 14th March in Thomand Park. Joe, no stranger to firsts, becomes the first Tipperary ETB learner to receive the status, in recognition of his studies in our school from 2003 to 2009, and his education journey to become Chief Engineer on Eirsat-1 – Ireland's first satellite.

Our Principal, Jack Flynn, and two of Joe’s former teachers Martin Buckley and Michael Maunsell made the trip to Limerick for the presentation.