Bordeaux, France was the destination for the Wrestling Northern Ireland team last weekend with three athletes were selected from Erne Wrestling Club to compete.

This was the French ‘National Ranking Tournament’ for women’s wrestling and men’s U20 freestyle wrestling.

First up on Saturday, March 2 was Naoise McManus in the U15 (50kg) category.

This was a large group of 11 athletes from several different European countries.

She pushed through three knockout rounds pinning each opponent to reach the final.

She lost out on the gold to a superb German athlete but came away with a well-deserved silver medal. 

Day Two started with Darragh Love at U20 (79kg) with a strong win in his first match.

He lost the next but came back with a vengeance to win his ensuing two matches. This put him in contention for the bronze medal where he just came up short to finish a very good fourth out of 13 top competitors.

Tomás Gormley at U20 (65kg) started his day also with a win but followed with two tough losses to very experienced wrestlers in another really large group of 18.

Tomás finished in 9th place. He is getting super experience from these international events and continues his quick progression in a very short period of time at the sport.

This was an excellent weekend for the NI Team and Erne Wrestlers are proud to have their quality recognised at a national level to represent their country.

Behind the scenes as always is Coach Bruce Irwin investing in these athletes to bring them to this elite standard. Thanks also to Wrestling Northern Ireland’s head coach Stuart Baker and coach William Baker for developing the squad and affording them these opportunities.

Next up for this coming weekend, Erne Wrestling Club is off to Manchester for the English Junior Championships 2024. The club will be well represented with six athletes competing.