Congratulations to the Irish Young Members team of Aidan Kinahan, Rachel Moloney, Owen Hester and Shanon Kinahan, who retained the Anglo-Irish YMA title on Saturday 27 August.

They fought off strong competition from Wales, Scotland, England and Northern Ireland to win the title. The Irish YMA team had waited 17 years to claim the title back in 2014 but made it three wins in a row in front of their home crowd at Kilkenny Mart when the Anglo Irish YMA final was held in conjunction with the International Limousin Congress 2016 event.

In order to qualify to represent Ireland, the team members previously had to compete and qualify to represent their regional club before competing in the national final staged at Roscrea mart earlier this year.

The brother and sister combination of Aidan and Shanon Kinahan represented the South West club (Kerry, Limerick region), Owen Hester represented the North West club (Mayo, Sligo, Roscommon, Galway region) and Rachel Moloney represented the Clare club.

The competition kicked off with the judging of four heifers and four bulls. Each competitor had to judge the animals and submit completed judging cards to the judges.

Their judging was then ranked against that of the master judges Richard O’Beirne (Ireland), Richard Bartle (England) and Kim Steel Nicholson (Northern Ireland). These three judges officiated over all three stages of the competition.

The next stage of the competition saw each participant present their reasons for placing one animal over the next in the judging section to the panel of judges in an interview style scenario.

The final stage of the competition was the handling/showing section, each young member was allocated an animal at random, and they had to parade and stand these animals in the show ring to be assessed by the judges.

The standard of competition in this section was extremely high, with very few points separating the top competitors.

Senior

Top spot in the senior section went to Stephanie Dick representing Scotland, followed by Elfyn Wyn Jones from Wales in second and Shanon Kinahan from Ireland in third place. The young Irish team fared well in the junior section with Aidan Kinahan finishing first and Owen Hester in second followed by Ruth Hamill of Northern Ireland in third.