Founded in 1972 after a Sunday morning challenge match in Mulligans pub between the printing companies Millers and European Printing Corporation. Our trade union supplied rent free accommodation in their basement in Gardiner Street and bought us clocks and sets. Our first year was precarious, nearly relegated out of the OHanlon Division (then the last division) and wins so scare that if anybody won a game they were automatically promoted to the top board for the next match.
Things improved. Charlie Marshall (a bookbinder) came out of chess retirement to join us and he brought with him his friend Mick Germaine who then brought his employer's son Herbert Scarry. Printers' sons also started arriving (John Proudfoot, Hugh Cummins and others). Then Denis and Hilary Healy joined us out of the blue (no printing connection). It was a treat to watch Hilary play and see her male opponents' faces light up when they realised they'd drawn a female opponent, then watch their smiles slowly fade as she outplayed them.
Over the next few years we won every division except the first, and we had Leinster (Junior and Intermediate) and correspondence chess champions within our ranks. Hilary Healy was selected to play for Ireland in Skopje, Yugoslavia. But she had to pay her own fare to get there and, as this was before Ryan Air, it was a considerable expense. The company I worked for was owned by Robert Maxwell who also owned Pergamon Press which published chess books. I wrote asking him for help and the unpredictable Maxwell stumped up the entire fare without a string attached. When word of this spread people approached me in the hope I could get Maxwell to publish the chess books they were writing!
Nothing lasts forever and, after the club had to vacate its Gardiner Street location to make way for a print museum, its decline accelerated. It disbanded in 1987. It was really great while it lasted and we were very much a part of that intoxicating chess scene in the Ireland of the 1970s.
The picture at the top is from about 1974 and shows:
- Back row: Michael Carroll, Charlie Marshall, Frank ODonnell.
- Centre row: Pat Byrne, Denis Healy, John Proudfoot.
- Bottom row: Tom Collins, Hilary Healy.