See who's reading On a Wing and a Prayer by Terry Reilly!!!

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Music stars are reading On a Wing and a Prayer

Apologies for lack of blogs and article uploads over recent months. My excuse is that I have been busy researching material for some books I am currently writing, and also in relation to On a Wing and a Prayer The Musical which I created from my book On a Wing and a Prayer. With Tommy Marren we wrote a musical version which proved a big hit and has so far raised over 200,000 euro for Mayo Roscommon Hospice. A DVD, shot on location, is also available. See www.hospice.ie

Delighted to say that in recent weeks singing sensation Susan Boyle and Bono of U2 have each received a copy of the book which has proved to be a major success. It is about the life and times of a remarkable priest, Monsignor James Horan of Knock, Co Mayo. You can see Susan and Bono pictred at Ireland West Airport Knock,  Co Mayo, with the book on www.wingandprayermusical.com

The book is beginning to attract a lot of attention in the US. Spread the good news!Meanwhile Mayo footballers have made it to the All-Ireland semi-final and play Kerry on Sunday in Croke Park, Dublin, so fingers crossed.

All the best and keep well!

Terry

Get your DVD On A Wing and a Prayer The Musical: Local Outlets:

Castlebar: Castle Books/McLoughlins;

Castlerea: John Tully, Pharmacy; Crossmolina: Quinns; Knock: Hospice Office Knock/J.J. Byrnes/Heneghans;

Manorhamilton: O’Maras Pharmacy;

Roscommon: McGuinness Pharmacy; Strokestown: Hanleys Spar;

Tubbercurry: Gillespies; Westport: The Book Shop, Bridge St/Hobans Centra;

The Hospice Shops in Swinford, Castlerea & Roscommon, and Mayo Roscommon Hospice at Knock;

Balla: Roches Centra;

Ballina: Rouse Jewellers; Ballinrobe: Murphys Newsagents;

Ballymote: Lavins; Ballaghaderreen: Towey’s; Ballyhaunis : The Gem; Ballyheane: Stauntons;

Bangor Erris: Brogan’s;

Belmullet: Brogan’s;

Charlestown: Bargain Box Bellaghy;

Claremorris: Smyths.

For American/Canadian versions contact Mayo Rosocmmon Hospice, Knock, Co Mayo   www.hospice.ie

Paypal ordering  facilities at hospice site.

Due to popular demand, the hit musical On a Wing and a Prayer is making a very special return to the Royal Theatre, Castlebar , Co Mayo, in May.

 ‘Very special,’ because the dates mark the centenary of the birth of the extraordinary Monsignor James Horan , builder of Knock, who was born on May 5^th, 1911.

 The show will again be staged on Thursday, May 5^th, and Saturday, May 7^{th  and a large contingent is expected to travel from Britain for the shows. Another party is travelling from Boson.  The shows will mark  the birth of}  Monsignr Horan in a very memorable manner.

 Taoiseach Enda Kenny and other celebrities have been invited to attend what should be a memorable occasion.

 Again, proceeds from the shows will go to the Mayo Roscommon Hospice. The shows will also mark the launch of an exciting DVD on the life and times of Monsignor Horan. It has been shot on location in the region and features many of the songs from the musical. The DVD has been directed by Tommy Marren and features  many local landmarks, including Knock Shrine Basilica and Knock Airport. It will sell at 14.99 euro, again with proceeds in aid of the Hospice which has ambitious development plans.

 Given the adverse impact of  the economic downturn on Hospice fundraising and continuing HSE cutbacks on services the Palliative Care Teams are calling on the Foundation more and more to meet the increasing needs of patients and their families.  It is hoped proceeds from the musical will help alleviate that demand.

 Pat Jennings of the roomy Royal Theatre which can accommodate over 2,000 people, said the shows in November and January had set records for the speed with which tickets were snapped up and he is confident that the May shows, because of the centenary of Fr Horan’s birth, will again sell out.

 “We are delighted to be hosting On a Wing and a Prayer in The Royal Theatre again, the response to the show has been amazing, it has captured the imagination and the great memories people had of Monsignor Horan. We have had people from all over Ireland come to see the show, people who used to live in the area and have now moved to away to Dublin or elsewhere and people who served him at mass, everyone has their own memories of that time. 

 “The show is truly a testament to Terry Reilly for his writing and to Tommy Marren for making it come alive on stage and we are delighted to showcase it in our venue.

 “The response to this tour has been great again, those that saw the show are recommending it to their friends and well they should, its definitely a show not to be missed on this the anniversary of Monsignor Horan,” he said.

 *Now that we are back from Oz look out for more regular blogs on a wide variety of issues!

A new show is born!!!

I was telling you here last April of plans to bring a brand new musical to stage – On a Wing and a Prayer, the story of the remarkable Monsignor James Horan, the man who brought the Pope to Ireland and built an international airport near Knock.

Well, a week ago, it came to pass: a cast of 125 talented volunteers took to the stage to present a sparkling new show scripted by myself and Tommy Marren of Mid West Radio.

It packed the Royal Theatre in Castlebar for three nights, despite adverse weather conditions, and is booked for another three nights in January, with requests to bring the show around Ireland and overseas.

So a  great big THANK YOU to all who made this dream possible. You have all been truly amazing. You have shown what Mayo and the West can do...to Cynthia Clampett, CEO Mayo Roscommon Hospice, for believing in the Show and picking up a huge challenge, to Tommy Marren for getting so deeply involved on many levels and doing it all like the real pro he is, to Lavinia Slater Gilmartin for yet again working her magic and wowing the audiences.

To the wonderful talent in the region, actors, singers, dancers, set designers, wardrobe, sound and lighting engineers, songwriters, back stage crew. To all the media, local and national, Jim Fahy and Michael Murphy of RTE, to Dana for her guest appearance on the Thursday night, to Liam Lyons photographer Westport for the portrait photo of Monsignor Horan, also to Ballina Office Supplies and Barry Williams for their help in that project.

To everyone at home and overseas who have made contact and have been so positive and encouraging. Space does not permit here to mention everyone by name, but that does not mean your role was any the less important (see full list of cast etc on this site)- To everyone, again, THANK YOU.  You were wonderful, you did succeed, you did win!  Up the West!!! 

*** On a Wing and a Prayer BREAKING NEWS: Back by popular demand- The Musical On A Wing and A Prayer Show is to be performed again at the Royal Theatre in Castlebar on THURSDAY JANUARY 20TH, FRIDAY JANUARY 21ST AND SATURDAY JANUARY 22ND at 8pm nightly. Again, proceeds in aid of Mayo Roscommon Hospice. An ideal opportunity to buy a CHRISTMAS PRESENT for parents, grandparents, relations, or yourself!!!...

 See www.wingandprayermusical.com and Facebook page for more details.

For a very good review of the show read Paul Healy’s report in the Roscommon People, isse Dec 3, 2010. See also local print media, The Western People, Mayo News, Connaught Telegraph, Mayo Advertiser,  and Mid West Radio archives.ESENT for parents, grandparents, relations, friends. More details shortly! Spread the word !

Take care

Terry

Don’t know about you, but to me it’s a bit of a relief that the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank are here to get a grip on our finances.

We have been drifting along for the past three years, hoping we could ease our way through a crisis of our own making. Leadership, vision, transparency have all been woefully missing.

We spent like fools, believing the good times would never end. We awarded ourselves bigger wages increases that the Germans, our civil service grew out of proportion to the work to be performed and when the writing was on the wall someone came up with the Croke Park agreement. That was but the latest manifestation of the sense of denial our ruling politicians indulged in.

Our political system has failed us. We have returned the same people to power for far too long. And we let have let them get away with it, election after election. If you want to keep a football team keen and competitive you keep changing things around, freshening the side up, changing the captain: you build up experience. We have been poor selectors.

We even put up with our leaders telling concerned economists to go take a jump when it was obvious that the building boom was heading for a bubble that could only burst with a bang. Instead of reining in on excessive spending, the witlessness of the cappuccino and prada society, and spending on foreign and local property investments, on SUVs and other shows of vulgarity,  the message was ‘spend, spend, spend’,

You know what I find really funny, though: this loss of something called ‘sovereignty’. Fact is, since we started looking after our own affairs in 1922 we have not been exactly bright in how we have done things.

We continued to export our people, in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s – and they provided the bailout we needed to waddle along. Our exiles sent back billions over all those years to keep the hearths lit in Irish towns and villages. They were the IMF and the European Bank all rolled into one. They kept us going when our so-called leaders didn’t have the wit to be creative, imaginative, and enterprising. No, they were more noted for saying something nonsensical like ‘emigration is a useful safety valve’!

In time historians will look back on the first 90 years of Ireland running its own affairs and judge the period much more critically than has been done to date. We went from poverty to vulgar excessiveness to bust in that period, with very few politicians emerging with any great credit.

Can we survive this latest crisis?  Of course we can. The Irish are resilient. We have survived foreign occupation, pestilence, wars, famine and a failed and sometimes corrupt political class. Compared to that the IMF will look like an honest Fairy God Mother.

However, we must use the time in the rebuilding process to cut out the terrible waste, to get rid of the Seanad, to whittle the Dail down to 100 members, to crack down on our social welfare cheats and abusers, our irresponsible bankers and those paid to keep an eye on things, and to bring to heel an emerging Black Economy so easily identified by the mushrooming number of tradesmen’s vans which no longer carry names or logos, or telephone numbers. Go count them! And from now on vote wisely; elect Government for one term and then vote them out, and keep that going until such time as none of them can take us for granted any more.

Another View - The Blog

 Devil will be in detail of Mayo GAA 'review' terms

By Terry Reilly

SO Mayo GAA Board is finally to conduct a review into the state of football in the county.

The Board, following the early exit of the senior team from the championship this year, is to hold a series of meetings over the coming weeks and months. Clubs and their delegates, and members of the senior football panel will have the opportunity to express and articulate their views.

The Board, in its recent statement, said it was important that all those involved in the game in the county get the chance to contribute to the review.

Rather intriguingly, the Board statement added: “We do not think that it is constructive for the floor to be opened to everyone as has happened on local radio …. While many of those who have contributed have the best interests of Mayo football at heart, we do not feel that all who have voiced their opinion do. Therefore we believe it would be more prudent and productive if those involved at all levels of our game in the county be given the chance to voice their thoughts through the medium of this review process.

”With the review subject to take place in the coming weeks, it has been decided to defer the appointment of the next senior football manager until after this process has been finalised. We feel that to do otherwise would take some focus and direction away from the matter at hand - namely the overall welfare of the game in our county,” the County Board statement added.

 All genuine followers of the Green and the Red look forward to what the Board terms the ‘more precise details on this review’ which will follow at a later date. The ‘precise details’ will be scrutinised as the real meat in the sandwich, hopefully the filling that will provide real sustenance.

 Questions on followers’ minds will no doubt include: How wide-ranging will the review be? What is its scope? Will there be a thorough audit of all the clubs in the county? An audit into club membership and structures? Demographics? Marketing and market penetration? Skills? Coaching? Budgets? Playing numbers? Public Relations? A holistic examination to embrace the whole gamut of the organisation in the county?

 Will the last three county team managers at under 16, Minor, U-21 and senior levels be interviewed, asked for their views, and for the insights/statistics they must have garnered during their terms?

 And, probably most of all, everyone connected with Mayo football will want to know what independent-minded set of people will carry out the review

 To put it simply, the review (I prefer if it were called an ‘audit’) must be based on business principles. To be specific: if you were a member of Board of Directors of a corporate body that had spent the equivalent of maybe 50 million euro over the last sixty years in attempting to get your product into a dominant position in the marketplace but had failed to regain your premier position on the shelf, you would surely be asking serious questions - assuming, of course, that you had retained your position. How many heads would have rolled in the interim in business? And, no, I am not talking about the salesmen!

 For many years now I have thought it ludicrous that after Mayo lose out in the championship there is a big mad  rush to question the competence of the team manager, or the full-back, or the midfielder or advance the notion that we don’t have any ‘forwards’.  I have been writing about this nonsensical approach for years, and calling for an audit - yes, it’s on the record of this paper. I have asked some county managers over the years to leave their audit with the County Board when they stepped down from their responsibilities with their teams. Don’t know if that ever happened (I suspect it didn’t) or even if the managers were ever asked to do so. I have tried to persuade friends who inevitably ask who the next Mayo manager is going to be to think again before they pursue that lazy questioning, pleading that they stop putting the cart before the horse.

 Four years ago, when John P Kean and I were interviewed on Mid West Radio by Tommy Marren, I voiced the fairly radical view that who was appointed team manager was largely irrelevant in the context of a Mayo football scenario badly damaged by repeated Croke Park batterings. John P. was of a similar mind, but our views did not exactly curry favour with some County Board officials.  Fix other things, provide the basis for going forward and give the players and the manager a platform from which to launch their charge, we argued then. Don’t just continue to sit back and hope that the manager will have a magic wand that can cure all Mayo’s ills, we pleaded. Sixty years of hoping shows that things don’t work out like that. There is no fairy godmother, and desperate prayers to the Man on high haven’t exactly worked either.

 And no, it’s NOT a blame game. Clubs, their members, county board members and officials all share in the blame if there is to be blame.  Let’s move on… avoid personal abuse, and handy cockshots. Let’s all take an objective view of things, come up with the leadership, the ambition, the motivation, the vision, the plan. Let’s just try to put Team Mayo back in business.

 It is, of course, not easy to get people to really engage in deeper analysis of what might be wrong with Mayo football.  It has amused me that while it is very easy to get business people to talk about how their company is performing, their marketing spend, their staffing levels, their projections, the bottom line,  the whole nine yards in fact.  Yet, by and large, these same people, once they put their club or county colours on, let emotion take over from their business brain: they cannot tell you the key stats from their club game, cannot tell you how many Under 16 county titles at various levels they have pencilled in as a target in their 5 year plan, cannot tell you the demographics of the parish, haven’t head-hunted people with key skills to help out in the club drive to be more relevant in and for the community.

 Crazy, isn’t it!  ‘So what?’ I can hear people ask. ‘We are just every bit as good as the next county in how we run our affairs.’  Maybe so, but if Mayo wants to scale the football heights again and start nailing All-Ireland titles. The combined effort has be much better than what the county next door is doing. Either that, orlet’s us just  relax and be content with winning the Connacht title on a fairly regular basis. Just leave the big stuff to the counties that are well organised, and/or have a winning tradition like the Kerrys and the Kilkennys of  GAA-land.

 They are at the business end of affairs. A mix of  tradition, expectation, planning, leadership and vision keeps them there.

 The ‘Mayo audit’, if carried out with due diligence, objectivity and an open-mindedness so as to come up with the solutions to what we yearn to achieve, can be the stepping stone to better times. If not, it can only retard the situation.

 Hence the heightened expectation as we look forward to the devil in the ‘precise details’. Stay tuned and keep the faith!

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Another View-The Blog  By Terry Reilly

Get your certificate of Irishness!

ARE you one of the 70 million people around the world of Irish descent who do not qualify for Irish citizenship but would love some tangible piece of paper to prove your links with the old sod?
 Well, listen up as they say in my neck of the woods, for I have news for you. Our Government has just announced plans to introduce a certificate of Irish heritage for people dotted around the gobe who have a hint of Irish blood in them. 

 I kid you not. Our Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin has decided to proceed with the initiative, which was first proposed at the Global Irish Economic Forum in Dublin last year when people from all over the world with Irish blood in their veins came together to propose ways and means of getting us through this recession which has left approximately 14% of our population out of work.
 The certificates will be issued by a third party agency acting under licence from the Department of Foreign Affairs, which is considering charging a fee for each document issued. It is intended that the initiative will be self-financing, and is not designed to raising significant amounts of revenue.
 The scale of the market for a heritage certificate is not known. But the feeling is that many descendants of Irish emigrants would wish to buy one to display in their homes or as gifts for their children.