In December, 2008 the following advertisement appeared in Ireland's main evening newspaper, the "Evening Herald":
NEWLY FORMED KILBARRACK PIGEON CLUB (beside Greendale Shopping Centre) invites new members to join. For information call Robert McNally at 087-2936738.
This advertisement caught the eye of a reporter for one of Ireland's Sunday newspapers, the "Sunday Tribune", which resulted in the following article appearing in the Tribune's magazine of 18th January, 2009.
"I put the ad in the paper because we need some new members to join our pigeon-racing club that meets every week in the Kilbarrack Community Centre. Kilbarrack United Football Club gave us a room that we can use for a club night on a Wednesday, and on Friday night for marking the pigeons before they go racing at the weekend.
A few of us left the Raheny Club to set up our own closer to home in Kilbarrack. Now we're hoping to get some of the younger community involved in it as well. We think that, if developing an interest in pigeon racing could help save five young people from getting into drugs or whatever, then that's brilliant.
None of us ever touched drugs because we always had animals growing up. It taught us responsibility. My father was very tough on us. The day that I bought my first two pigeons, My father said that I could keep them but on the condition that every morning when I had my breakfast as well as when I got home from school, I had to clean them out, feed them, let them out and let them back in again. And if I neglected them for one day they'd be set free. It was a good lesson to learn, but he was tough in that regard.
When I got a bit older, I decided to join the circus. I did a year in Greece with Hoffman's Circus, working as a publicity manager; and then I worked all over Europe with different circuses.
After that I moved to Germany for nearly fourteen years and continued touring from place to place. One day, a man offered be a couple of pigeons, and I kept them in a Mercedes van. When I came home about ten years ago, myself and a few friends joined the pigeon club in Raheny, but now we are starting our own.
Pigeons are a big commitment. I leave my birds out at 5a.m. every morning before I go to work. It's an expensive hobby; you have to get a shed to keep them in and a raciing clock and various other things. But it's all training and instinct.
When they are babies they sit around the shed and you call them in for food. Eventually, they start flying around. Then they get a little stronger and you take them to Dollymount Strand or somewhere like that and let them fly home from there.
It's all gradual. On the first day they do a mile, on the second they do a mile and a half, and you build them up to thelve miles for the first two weeks. After that you send them twenty miles to Naas and then they just find their way home. When you get a pigeon home, the feeling is amazing.
Pigeon racing is not for everybody, but not everybody is mad into football or golf either. Different people have different interests. I don't like sitting in a pub looking at a football match. I'd rather be standing out in the garden waiting on a pigeon. If I get one home, for me it's how a Man United fan would feel when a striker gets a goal. It's just a good feeling for me.
They give me such enjoyment. Sometimes I take them to Tallaght with me in the morning when I'm going to work and let they out to fly home at about 7a.m. Then my mother will ring me and say they are home by twelve minutes past seven, and I laugh when I think that it takes me forty minutes to go home."