Clubhouse noticeboard — est. this afternoon
The NACA Files
Fun facts & trivia from Irish running's parallel circuit, 1980s & 90s
NACA — the National Athletic and Cycling Association — ran its own club scene in Ireland alongside the official BLE circuit through the 1980s and 90s. It was a world of parish-hall committee meetings, hand-timed stopwatches and Sunday cross country in muddy fields, where a good club coach could shape a career every bit as much as any national programme. Its athletes raced for county pride at home and carried the NACA vest onto the continent too, into a wider network of European workers'-sport federations — with at least one away day that ended in genuine chaos.
Forty-five questions below on the runners, clubs, coaches and fixtures of that era, pulled straight from results sheets and old newspaper clippings. Some of it you'll only know if you were there.
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