Hall of Fame for Patsy McGonagle

The Donegal Sports Star Committee has announced that Patsy McGonagle will be inducted into the Hall of Fame when the Awards take place in the Mount Errigal Hotel on Friday week the 31st of January.
McGonagle will be the 49th inductee into the Donegal Sports Star Awards Hall of Fame. The Ballybofey man has been involved in athletics for six decades going back to his time as a boarder at St. Colm’s College in Derry, then at third level in London to being a member of Cranford A.C. before founding Finn Valley A.C. in 1971.
The rest as they say is history with over 50 years at helm there with lots of success. McGonagle moved onto the international stage as Irish athletics manager for over two decades. The Finn Valley A.C. legend is the seventh person from an athletics background to receive the Hall of Fame honour after Cyril O’Boyle (1983), Paul Dolan (1989), John Carlin (2004), Hugo Duggan (2009), Danny McDaid (2011) and Eamonn Giles (2021). The Ballybofey man’s father Patsy Snr was also a Hall of Fame winner back in 1995. He played for the Irish soccer side at the 1948 Olympics. His son went on to manage four Irish Olympic teams. The only other ‘father and son’ to be recognised in this very special category were John and Jim Sheridan. The soccer men were inducted in 2008 and 2015 respectively.